The
following teaching messages from gurus and classic texts were
originally posted on the Petros-Truth forum of Yahoo Groups.

Original
messages by Petros are now combined on a separate page, here.

2000

"As
far as I am concerned, once and for all, let me declare to the world:
Iam
neither illuminated nor enlightened. I am just a very ordinary,
verysimple
man, with no adjectives and no degrees. I have burned all
mycertificates.
. . . I don't know what the difference is. I am neither. I amlight
itself, neither enlightened nor illuminated; I have left those
wordsfar
far behind. I can see them like dust, still stirring, far away on
thepath
that I will never travel again, just footprints in the sand."

--
Osho, Glimpses of a Golden Childhood 2/22/00

"A
million afflictions infested my body;Through
my absorption in SahajThey
have given way to bliss.He
who realizes his true SelfSees
the LordAnd
only the LordIn
everything;Nor
disease, nor three fevers (physical, mental and spiritual)Afflict
him now."

--
Kabir 2/25/00

"Only
by starting with who and what I am is the problem precluded; all
fearis
removed; and then one may do the right thing, if there is 'doing' to
bedone.
He or she beholds that Spirit is the sole self, that is 'I,' and
thisleaves
no need for evolvement, cross-bearing, or crown-wearing; and
alreadytruth
is truth."

--
Kay, 1994 Atlanta Awareness Center, tape 5N (3/1/00)

"It
was only by investing no value in an experience that I was able to
findout
its truth or falsity. What is false never lasts; it falls away of
itsown
accord, while what is true remains, because truth does not come
andgo
-- it is always there. So long as our experiences come and go and we
areinvesting
in them our own values, thoughts and emotions, we'll never findout
if there is any truth in them, for truth is what remains when there
areno
experiences left."

--
Bernadette Roberts, The Experience of No-Self 3/9/00

"Your
life in this world is like a sleeper who dreams that he has gone
tosleep.
He thinks, 'Now I am asleep,' unaware that he is already in a
secondsleep."

--
Rumi 3/9/00

"Intelligence
is the fundamental meditation. Consciousness itself ismeditation.
The usual man is always already seeking, so it is not a matterof
doing or not doing some particular kind of motivated search. We
arealways
already seeking, whether at this moment we are doing it in the
formof
a yogic technique, or the next moment we are doing it in the form of
asly
glance at somebody as we pass them in the street. There is simply
andalways
the process of our own action. When there is the engagement of
actionby
real, unmotivated intelligence, understanding begins to develop as
aspontaneous,
real process in consciousness."

--
Franklin Jones, The Method of the Siddhas. 3/16/00

"The
world of the spirit is nothing different from the material world.
Theworld
of the spirit is just the material world finally seen right. In
theworld
of the spirit one makes one's fortune by going bankrupt."

--
Christian Bobin, The Secret of Francis of Assisi 3/21/00

"There
is nothing in existence other than right now. When we go into
memory,we're
no longer present in the Spirit. We're in a contraction of the
mindand
the emotions, and it actually has no value for us. The teaching of
theworld
is of contraction. The teaching of the truth is of expansion."

--
John-Roger, The Tao of Spirit 3/23/00

A
man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it; and then
helooks
and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows
thathis
life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well
aseverybody
else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees, thatnothing
is more important than anything else. In other words, a man
ofknowledge
has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but
onlylife
to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his
fellowmen
is his controlled folly."

--
Casteneda, A Separate Reality 3/28/00

"The
worse the conditions of life, the more productive the inner
work,provided
you remember to work. The energy spent on active work on oneself
isthen
and there transformed into a fresh supply, but that spent
onidentification
and negative emotions is lost forever."

--
Gurdjieff 3/30/00

"Before
the world was, consciousness was. In consciousness it comes
intobeing,
in consciousness it lasts and into pure consciousness it
dissolves.At
the root of everything is the pure feeling of I Am. The state of
mind,'there
is a world' is secondary, for to 'be,' I do not need a world,
theworld
needs me."

--
Nisargadatta, from I Am That, 4/5/00

"When
the creature ends, there God begins to be. God asks only that you
getout
of his way, in so far as you are creature, and let him be God in
you.The
least creaturely idea that ever entered your mind is as big as God.
Why?Because
it will keep God out of you entirely. The moment you get ideas,
Godfades
out and the Godhead too. It is when the idea is gone that God
getsin."

--
Meister Eckhart, sermon on The Love of God 4/7/00

"Every
man who has once touched the level of the impersonal is charged
witha
responsibility towrads all human beings: to safeguard, not their
persons,but
whatever frail potentialities are hidden within them for passing over
tothe
impersonal."

--
Simone Weil, "Human Personality" 4/17/00

"To
understand intellectually means to stand under -- in other words, to
beburdened
by mental concepts. Such understanding prevents one from graspingthe
truth, and is not true Understanding."

--
Anandamayi Ma 4/24/00

"The
whole concern of learning is to find one's original heart. But a
greatman
is one who never loses the heart of a newborn."

-- Mencius
4/26/00

"I am
not interested in what men can say with their words, I am interested
only in what they can say with their Silence."

-- Sunyata
[Emmanuel Sorenson] 5/1/00

"If
there is one [a person in the natural state], he won't be hiding
somewhere. He will be there shining like a star. You can't keep such
people under a bushel."

-- U.G.
Krishnamurti 5/4/00

"An
avatar is only a partial manifestation of Truth; a jnani is a whole."

-- Ramana
Maharshi 5/8/00

"A
life planned around death can resolve itself into a number of
well-defined, predictable conditions -- being a child, going to
school, working for a living, marrying, raising a family of your own,
and then retiring. But no one can tell you what it is going to be
like to be 200 years old, let alone 2000. Not even you. As hard as
you may try, you cannot plan an immortal life. All you can do is live
it. So an intrinsic part of physical immortality is embracing the
unknown. I use this word 'embracing' intentionally. . . . We must
love this feeling of unknowing. Because living with the unknowable is
not just a side effect of living forever, it essentially is living
forever. This is what we're talking about. This is the immortal
life."

-- Herb
Bowie, _Why Die?_ 5/12/00

"Maturity
is what is on the other side of Realizing. Maturity is what is left
after inquiry."

-- Byron
Kate, The Work Intensive (El Segundo 5/14/00) 5/22/00

"I
find it to be the height of wisdom not to endeavor to oversee myself
and live a life of prudence and common sense; but to see over and
above myself, entertain sublime conjectures, make myself the
thoroughfare of thrilling thoughts, live all that can be lived...
Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not the cars. What
are threescore years and ten, hurriedly and coarsely lived, to
moments of divine leisure, in which your life is coincident with the
life of the universe?"

-- from
Thoreau's Walden 5/27/00

"Every
person or condition appearing to me is personal or physical sense,
knocking at the door of my consciousness to be accepted as person or
condition. Consciously reject every appearance. Understand that this
is neither person nor condition, but physical or pesonal sense
seeking admission as real existence and seeking to personalize
itself. Never let error personalize itself or you have no principle
to demonstrate."

-- Joel S.
Goldsmith 5/31/00

"Only
when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And
when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to
climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you
truly dance."

-- from
_The Prophet_ 7/4/00

"Get
out of the construction business. Stop building bridges across the
raging waters of samsaric existence, attempting to reach the 'far
shore,' nirvana. Better to simply relax, at ease and carefree, in
total naturalness, and just go with the primordial flow, however it
occurs and happens. And remember this: whether or not you go with the
flow, it always goes with you."

"When
people make the decision in their lives that they want to be free
more than anything else, and that choice goes all the way to the
deepest part of themselves, they begin to make different choices
because they want to be free."

-- Andrew
Cohen 7/14/00

"Motivation
to practice is a luxury. . . . Motivation is a function of
separation. Practice is designed to transcend or obviate the illusion
of separation. You don't activate the motivation to practice, you
simply practice. And there will be times in which you feel motivated
and times in which you don't. But even when you don't feel motivated,
you still practice. Consistency is what's important."

-- Lee
Lozowick, _As It Is: A Year on the Road with a Tantric Teacher_.
7/15/00

"Q.
How is one to know that in the heart the Self itself shines as
Brahman?"

"Maharshi:
Just as the elemental ether within the flame of a lamp is known to
fill without any difference and without any limit both the inside and
the outside of the flame, so also the knowledge-ether that is within
the Self-light in the heart, fills without any difference and without
any limit both the inside and the outside of that Self-light. This is
what is referred to as Brahman."

-- Ramana
Maharshi, _Self Enquiry_ (Vicharasangraham) 7/24/00

"The
personality sitting in a chair is not the Guru. The Guru is the
Divine Manisfestation, the process that can include you and rip you
out of all the garbage that you value. None of this has any value and
none of it is anything but God."

-- Da Free
John 8/8/00

"The
Absolute works with nothing. The tools and the materials are the
unseen. To make yourself such material, be a blank sheet of paper
upon which It might write; or a barren patch of ground into which It
might plant its seed."

-- Rumi,
The Fragile Vial 8/10/00

"It's
extraordinarily powerful that we decide just to sit; not 'hang out'
or perch, but just sit on a meditation cushion. Such a brave
attitude, such a wonderful commitment is magnificent. It is very
sane, extraordinarily sane. . . . Buddha did it 2,500 years ago; he
sat and wasted his time. And he transmitted the knowledge to us that
it is the best thing we can do for ourselves -- waste our time by
sitting. . . . Just sitting like a piece of rock is a very important
point."

-- Chogyam
Trunpa, _The Path is the Goal_ 8/13/00

"In
Buddha-Dharma, practice and enlightenment are one and the same.
Because it is the practice of enlightenment, a beginner's
wholehearted practice of the way is exactly the totality of original
enlightenment."

-- Dogen,
_Bendowa_ (Discourse on the Way) 8/15/00

"Receiving
abhisheka [spiritual transmission] is not the same as collecting
coins or stamps or the signatures of famous people. Receiving
hundreds and hundreds of abishekas and constantly collecting blessing
after blessing as some kind of self-confirmation has at times become
a fad, a popular thing to do. . . . People who collect successive
abhishekas in this manner regard them purely as a source of identity
and as a further reference point. They collect them out of a need for
security, which is a big problem."

-- Chogyam
Trunpa, _Journey without Goal_

"Even
one period of zazen of a single person, if it is practiced mindfully,
is one with all things and completely permeates all time. It is
essential to sit with an attitude of being one with the whole world
in which the self is living. If you maintain this attitude, you
perform essential buddha function within this inexhaustible dharma
universe of past, present and future."

-- Kosho
Uchiyama Roshi in _The Wholehearted Way_

"There
is a separateness that is in fact more of a grand union than anything
else could be. Because of the separateness there could be unity.
Unity doesn't have to be glued together. In fact, that's what is
known as imprisonment. You don't have to keep track of yourself
particularly. You see the reflection of yourself anyway; the
mountains are you anyway."

-- Chogyam
Trungpa, _The Path is the Goal_ 8/19/00

"It is
not anybody who is going into samadhi. If anybody goes into samadhi,
he will have to come out of it. You will have to realise your
natural, normal state. This is sahaja samadhi. The Maharshi also
spoke about that state. A man of ignorance is in an unnatural state.
. . . When ignorance is removed, he recovers his lost health. . . .
If by samadhi you refer to a state into which you enter for sometime
and out of which you come later on, it is not the real samadhi."

-- Swami
Ramdas (1884-1963) 9/28/00

"To
come to real understanding one ought not disparage the senses. The
senses (and their apparent objects) are not obstacles to
enlightenment; actually, they are the same as enlightenment, if one
understands them only as such."

-- Seng
T'san (Chinese patriarch) 10/1/00

"There
is a strange consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge
that whatever one is doing may very well be one's last act on earth."

-- Journey
To Ixtlan 10/23/00

"This
belief in a meditator is actually the block to meditation. When this
is revealed, then you will see that sitting silently is simply the
body sitting silently. The mind calming is simply the mind calming.
The mind agitated is the mind agitated. The body moving quickly is
the body moving quickly. That which is silent, is silent in both
movement and agitation. That which is free, is free."

-- from a
talk by Gangaji 10/30/00

"A
brief time spent in association with 'friends of truth' is better
than years spent in solitary dedication."

-- adapted
from Idries Shah _The Way of the Sufi_ 11/6/00

"Life
is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and
sink."

-- Suzuki
Roshi 11/19/00

"In
ordinary life, everyone wish less suffering for themselves. They
never voluntarily take greater suffering than their own. Only someone
wishing to increase suffering to at least 'three zeroes' am I
interested in."

-- E.J.
Gold (as Gurdjieff), _Secret Talks with Mr. G_ 12/1/00

"The
highest achievement of any seeker is the substitution of one form of
unconscious suffering and distraction for another. Locked into having
peak experiences after seemingly being successful at practice, he is
effectively excluding the possibility of living selflessly as God.
These experiences are at best what one allows oneself to have in
order to reinforce the egoistic state, and at worst what keeps one
there. It is only the guru who can break that cycle of dependency on
experience. What the seeker fails to realize without an appropriate
relationship with the true guru is that every experience is exactly
the same expression of dependency."

-- Lee
Lozowick, _In the Fire_ 12/4/00

"Just
as the candle is not there to illuminate itself, so the enlightened
ones are not here for their own edification but for the benefit all
around them."

-- Sufi
saying 12/8/00

"You
can have a complex mind, but it is never real to have a complex
heart. There is no complexity in tenderness, no complexity in
nurture, no complexity in the nectar of a true, absolutely honest way
of being. Where there is an absolute, inner honesty of heart, there
is the inner simplicity of a baby."

-- John
DeRuiter 12/18/00

"Because
you want to 'be,' you occupy yourself with talking and all else. To
sustain this 'you are,' you carry out various activities; thus you
keep your mind busy. But to the realized one the mind-flow is like
the release of obnoxious gases from below. The one who is stabilized
in the self looks down upon the mind-chattering as though it were
dirty and unwanted like those gases in the stomach."

--
Nisargadatta Maharaj, _The Nectar of the Lord's Feet_ 12/29/00

2001

"When
you inquire of yourself, 'What's really going on?,' the stories the
mind makes up start to get dissolved. Just let it go deep enough. Put
compassion onto aspects your own life, let tenderness take down the
shields that mind puts up out of fear. Then just be with what
remains."

-- Neelam,
New Year's intensive, Ojai 1/1/01

"From
the very outset not a thing is. From the beginning your nature is
pure."

-- Papaji

"Even
if you have only been present in silence at the assembly of a wise
one, you have gained more potentiality than you could, by ordinary
thinking, ever imagine."

-- Mirza
Asim (from Idries Shah _The Way of the Sufi_)

"So I
will not say that the divine exists; I will say that all that exists
is divine. Existence is divine; to exist is to be divine. Nothing is
that is not divine. Nothing can be that is not divine. We may know
it, we may not know it; we may be aware of it, we may not be aware of
it. It makes no difference."

-- Osho
(Rajneesh), _I Am the Gate_

"Spiritual
seeking is not to seek God or moksha or bliss because, whenever there
is desire, you will again project into the future. Spiritual seeking
is a disillusionment with the future and a remaining in the present:
being in the present, being ready to face whatsoever comes, here and
now."

-- Osho

"One
has to accept that what one wants is merely a matter of destiny. And
it is also a matter of destiny whether one will get what one wants or
not. . . The mind cannot get out of maya through its own will and
efforts. In fact, the mind is the instrument that maya uses. Maya
works through the mind. Therefore, it is impossible for the mind to
transcend maya."

-- Ramesh
Balsekar

"He
who instructs an ardent seeker to do this or that is not a true
master. The seeker is already afflicted by his activities and wants
peace and rest. In other words he wants cessation of his activities.
If the teacher tells him to do something in addition to, or in place
of, his other activities, can that be a help to the seeker?"

-- Ramana
Maharshi

"If
you realize, you know that there is no self. If you do not realize,
then there is a self. Selfhood is nonrealization and realization is
non-selfhood. . . . The self is the last thing one has to throw. One
can throw everything, but to throw the self is almost impossible
because the effort toward self-realization is the effort of the self
for the self. But the moment you realize, you will not be."

-- Osho

"If
you learn to direct your attention, which is also energy, in
appropriate ways, there is no issue of mind control, of stopping your
thoughts, or of anything else like that. Rather, what you are doing
is learning to see underneath the thoughts to the vitality which is
the source of their existence. If you can see and experience the
energy that generates the thoughts, then the thoughts themselves
become only so much static."

--
Chetanananda, _Dynamic Stillness_

"It is
noble to see an undeveloped human being making an effort to raise
himself spiritually in infinitely small amounts, since we understand
his limitation. But if we see a saint lifting a match stick, and
making a great fuss about it, it is a disgusting experience. So many
people become emotional when they see somebody who has a tremendous
capacity doing a simple act. Their ignorance and his lack of
accepting a challenge allow him to use his audience badly, and the
audience to react in a way that allows the ego of the performer to
feel secure. But this will never create the openness that continually
absorbs the total person, reducing all his attachments to a
free-flowing energy."

-- Swami
Rudrananda (1928-1973)

"It is
not for the love of the All that the All is dearly loved. Rather it
is for the love of the Self that the All is dearly loved. It is the
Self that should be seen, the Self that should be heard, the Self
that should be thought on and deeply pondered. By seeing the Self and
hearing it, by thinking of it and knowing it, the whole Universe is
known."

--
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2

"A
guru is a person whose individuality is lost. Only then can he look
deeply into your individuality. If he himself is an individual, he
will be able to interpret you but he will never be able to know you.
For example, if I am here and I say something about you, it is I who
am talking about you. It is not about you; rather it is about me. I
cannot help you because I cannot really know you at all. Whenever I
know you, it is in a roundabout way, by knowing myself. The point of
my being here must disappear. I must be just an absence. Only then
can I go deep inside you without any interpretation. Only then can I
know you as you are, not according to me."

--
Rajneesh, _Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy_

"A
subject-object metaphysics is in fact a metaphysics in which the
first division of Quality -- the first slice of undivided experience
-- is into subjects and objects. Once you have made that slice, all
of human experience is supposed to fit into one of these two boxes.
The trouble is, it doesn't. What he had seen is that there is a
metaphysical box that sits above these two boxes, Quality itself. And
once he'd seen this he also saw a huge number of ways in which
Quality can be divided. Subjects and objects are just one of the
ways."

-- Robert
M. Pirsig, _Lila_ p. 124

"When
the five senses stand, their action stilled, likewise the mind; when
the soul ceases to move or act: this have the sages told us is the
highest path."

-- Katha
Upanishad

"When
someone asks me why, in that case, I went to Swami Ramdas after
Maharshi's passing, I explain that the divine fervour I experienced
in Sri Ramana's presence began to wane when I left him and went to
stay in the Himalayas. Nevertheless, I had begun to see that a Higher
Power was expressing Itself, using me as an instrument. Bhagavan Sri
Ramana Maharshi was a principal influence in shaping this beggar to
this state. After His passing away, I did not see any conflict in
going to Swami Ramdas. It was Swami Ramdas who initiated me and gave
me this madness! The inner life of saints like Sri Aurobindo,
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, J. Krishnamurti and Swami Ramdas is far
far removed from what we can externally perceive of them. They
operate rooted in the Eternal Infinite which can never be
'known'.There is no individual there to report differences!"

-- Yogi
Ramsuratkumar (1918-2001)

"Why
do you come to see this beggar, spending your money and time, instead
of doing your duties? You think it important to see the physical
frame of this beggar. But had you known that this beggar is
everywhere, you would not come here often. Wherever you go, whomever
you meet whenever you are at your duty, if you utter the Name of this
beggar, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, this Beggar's Father will come to you
support."

-- Yogi
Ramsuratkumar

Bliss
and peace there shall beon
the path which Adam built well.Bliss
and peace there shall beon
the path which the self takes.Go,
self, in victoryto
the place from which you were transplanted,the
place of joy,in
which the true face shines.The
self has broken its chainsand
shed its transient garment.The
call of the self is the call of lifewhich
departs from the body of transience.

(Ancient
Mandean gnostic poem)

"There
is nothing more insidiously destructive to the attainment of
liberation than self-doubt and cynicism. Doubt is a movement of the
conditioned mind that always claims that . . . 'freedom is not
possible for me.' Doubt always knows; it "knows" that
nothing is possible. And in this knowing, doubt robs you of the
possibility of anything truly new or transformative from happening.
Furthermore, doubt is always accompanied by a pervasive cynicism that
unconsciously puts a negative spin on whatever it touches. Cynicism
is a world view which protects the ego from scrutiny by maintaining a
negative stance in relationship to what it does not know, does not
want to know, or cannot know. Many spiritual seekers have no idea how
cynical and doubt-laden they actually are. It is this blindness and
denial of the presence of doubt and cynicism that makes the birth of
a profound trust impossible. A trust without which final liberation
will always remain simply a dream."

--
Adyashanti

"If
you want to be expert in religious teaching, submit yourself to the
teaching of yourself; the one who hears the teaching of self, hears
the teaching of the prophets. You are the greatest book of God and
the most eloquent word of God; if you want to be the foremost
interpreter, be aware of that nature of yours."

--
Sun'ullah Gaibi, 17th cent. Turkish adept

"Even
though the breeze blows everywhere, coolness will be felt more if we
sit in the shade of a tree. In the same way, although God is
all-pervading, His presence will clearly shine in cerain places more
than in others. That is the greatness of satsang. Satsang is the best
thing for spiritual advancement."

-- Ma
Amritanandamayi

"I am
infinite and so are you and so is everyone, my friend. But there is a
veil, there is a veil. Do you follow me? You can see only a
infinitesimal part of me. Just like when a man stands on the seashore
and looks out over the great ocean, he sees only a fraction of that
vast ocean. Similarly, everyone can see only a small part of me. The
whole cosmos is but an infinitesimal part of the real man, but how
can a man see the whole cosmos?"

-- Yogi
Ramsuratkumar (1918-2001)

"In
Nirvana your little ego is snuffed out. Nirvana is a process of being
snuffed out. Nirvana is a defocalization on the sensate world and
switching over our consciousness to the insensate world of intuition,
of inner light, and of inner oscilloscopic vision in our gyral
center. We have to penetrate the various sheaths or planes. . . .
Your little ego becomes completely unified with the cosmic unified
field of ultimate universal reality. That is the state of Nirvana
which a few have had the good fortune to reach. But even if that
highest goal is not reached, one step toward that supreme synthesis
is a step indeed."

-- Ganesh
Baba (1907-1987)

"We
are all involved in a process of becoming. An awakening to higher
levels of awareness, of consciousness. We are also learning wisdom.
Acquiring knowledge of how the material plane works, what is karma,
what is morality, what is free will. It is practically impossible to
learn spirit without the benefit of an awakened teacher and we see
the evidence of this in the world's religions. Without spiritual
knowledge, we have no direction and moral fiber and wind up selfish,
negative, lustful, maybe even violent. Maybe crazy. Yet there is some
deception also in the world of living enlightened teachers, many of
them believe that because they have awoken to higher levels of
awareness, that they now have wisdom, which is hardly the truth. What
they have is expanded awareness, which is necessary for wisdom, but
not wisdom. Wisdom takes self-examination. And lots of time."

-- Don
James (American teacher)

"Scholars
say that the truth of Nonduality is known as Brahman, Paramatma, or
Bhagavan -- that is to say, the highest, unmanifest cosmic
Consciousness. Sages who with wisdom and non-attachment penetrate
deeply into this will see within themselves and this conciousness in
pure devotion exactly what they have read in the scriptures. For all
types of human, regardless of station, the highest form of practice
is found in devotion to God (however this God may be conceived). With
this devotion as a focal point for the mind, the Lord within is
unveiled to one."

-- Srimad
Bhagavatam Canto I Ch. 2, vv. 11-14.

"Yours
alone is the eye, Evil One. Yours are forms, yours is the sphere of
consciousness of contact at the eye. Where no eye exists, no forms
exist, no sphere of consciousness & contact at the eye exists:
there, Evil One, you cannot go. Yours alone is the ear...the
nose...the tongue...the body.... Yours alone is the intellect, Evil
One. Yours are ideas, yours is the sphere of consciousness &
contact at the intellect. Where no intellect exists, no ideas exist,
no sphere of consciousness of contact at the intellect exists: there,
Evil One, you cannot go."

-- Buddha
to Mara in the Samyutta Nikaya IV.19

Namo
Arihantanam: I bow down to Arihanta,Namo
Siddhanam: I bow down to Siddha,Namo
Ayriyanam: I bow down to Acharya,Namo
Uvajjhayanam: I bow down to Upadhyaya,Namo
Loe Savva-sahunam: I bow down to Sadhu and Sadhvi.Eso
Panch Namokaro: These five bowings down,Savva-pavappanasano:
Destroy all the sins,Manglananch
Savvesim: Amongst all that is auspicious,Padhamam
Havei Mangalam: This Navkar Mantra is the foremost.

(The
Navka Mantra, a basic prayer/meditation of Jainism.)

'Organizations
cannot make you free. No man from outside can make you free; nor can
organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make
you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organization, nor
throwing yourselves into works, make you free. You use a typewriter
to write letters, but you do not put it on an altar and worship it.
But that is what you are doing when organizations become your chief
concern. “How many members are there in it?” That is the
first question I am asked by all newspaper reporters. “How many
followers have you? By their number we shall judge whether what you
say is true or false.” I do not know how many there are. I am
not concerned with that. As I said, if there were even one man who
had been set free, that were enough.'

--
Krishnamurti, from his speech dissolving the Order of the Star, 1929.

"What
you call the universe is your universe. And there are a lot of your
universes. The whole universe springs from the fact that you are. You
don't need to do anything, say anything, prove anything. It just is.
You don't have to work on it for it to be there. It comes from the
fact that you are. And by the fact that you exist, my existence is.
By the fact that I exist, you exist. And we are. We don't have to do
anything to be with each other. We don't have to make our
relationship work. We are related."

-- Werner
Erhard

"Scientists
study the 'forces' of the atom, they have seen that it is of the
Nirdana chain-link concatenative dependence, one link destroyed the
whole chain is destroyed, yet they continue to play with the force,
the energy of the structure of the atom of the dream, indstead of
stopping and realizing they dont have to do anything at all because
it is only a dream already ended, a fantastic blossom in the air."

-- J.
Kerouac, _Some of the Dharma_

"Before
the first step is taken the goal is reached. Before the tongue is
moved the speech is finished. More (and less) than human insight is
needed to find the road."

"The
sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would
be to implant again into their presences a new organ, an organ like
Kundabuffer, but this time of such properties that every one of these
unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense
and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as of
the death of everyone upon whom his eyes of attention rests."

--Beelzebub's
Tales to His Grandson, p. 1183

"Devotees
cannot be an offense to one another. Only the usual person can offend
his friends, but the devotee cannot be an offense to another devotee,
even if he is wrong. Even if he is wrong, that is not an offense. He
is just wrong, that is all, and that is humorous enough. You should
be free to say anything you like to anyone here, and that should be a
completely humorous affair! 'Look, Smack, you're an asshole. I've
been wanting to kiss your cheek, and I can't even shake your hand.
I've been wondering how to love you, and you're full of shit. Forget
this fucking rice and vegetable meal, let's arm wrestle.' "

-- Bubba
Free John, _Garbage and the Goddess_

"There
are three screens. One is transparent, the second is red and the
third dark. The transparent screen is called satva guna, the red one
is rajas and the dark is tamas. By sadhana you must tear up these
screens one by one; first the dark screen of tamas, then the red one
of rajas. When these two are gone you are almost face to face with
the divine as there is only the transparent screen of satva between
you and the divine."

-- from
_The Gospel of Swami Ramdas_

Q: Papa,
you said man is only God playing the fool. When he chooses to show
his real form, he does so. Before God-realization, was Papa so
cheerful as now?

Papa: He
then chose to play the part of an ignorant and worried man. It is God
alone who is sitting here in the form of you all, posing to be
ignorant ones and saying, 'I have not realized God, tell me how to
cultivate bhakti, when will I realize God, etc.' In fact, you are all
That. So when you choose to be free, you become free.

-- from The
Gospel of Swami Ramdas

"If we
can learn to understand that even though we may feel quite content
just now at this moment, around the corner not too far away some form
of suffering is inevitable, and that we have our choice between
suffering and pain, then perhaps we can find in ourselves the serious
wish to work. The false hope of some future attainable state in which
we will feel no pain can destroy the inner necessity for work, unless
we realize once and for all with the whole of our Being that this is
an imaginary idea."

-- E.J.
Gold _The Hidden Work_

"Since
the recent tragedy my heart has been an open wound. Prayer, Pujas and
love help to heal, yet the heart still weeps. I hold you all in my
arms, in fact I hold you closer then ever before. We need to be there
for all those who lost their lives. We need to be there for all those
who lost loved ones. Hate has no place in any of our lives at this
moment or any moment. Sit before your altars or visit your temples
and churches and feel love for all of humanity. Our hearts must stay
open during this time of pain. The clouds of devastation will forever
be in our mind's eye. Do not let this day separate you from God the
Father and God the Mother."

-- Ma Jaya
Sati Bhagavati (September 2001)

"Will
is the fuel which carries awareness through all areas of the mind,
that spirit, that spiritual quality which makes all inner goals a
reality. Unfoldment does not take time. It takes a tremendous will.
That will has to be cultivated, just as you would cultivate a garden.
Those energies have to all be flowing through, in a sense, one
channel, so that everything that you do is satisfying, is complete,
is beautiful."

-- Sivaya
Subramuniyaswami

Atman --
the power of Aum is the eternal Self that is you. Aum is not
divisible; could it be divided it would not be the Whole. In
beginning and in end, Truth reveals only Truth. In a locked chamber
you are unaware of any outside world; with all openings closed, the
manifest and the unmanifest are not distinguishable. Only the mind
separates these two.

--
Nityananda (Chidakash Gita v. 87)

"It is
impossible to know for certain about the ways of perfected beings or
to know about their karma. Some of them stay completely naked, their
only couch the earth, and don't even have a torn piece of mattress,
whereas some live in royal splendor that surpasses even that of
kings. Some are very serene and calm, some stay mute all the time;
others never stop swearing, and still others lie around like pythons:
they don't even move. One sage said that some Siddhas act like
saints, others act like madmen, and still others act like evil
spirits, remaining ever in a very strange state. In spite of all
this, they are all kings, not beggars."

-- Swami
Muktananda

"My
whole work consists in making people ignorant. Ignorance has depth,
ignorance has innocence, ignorance is profound; not knowing has no
limits to it. Knowing is always limited. . . .They say that science
is an effort to know more and more about less and less. If you go on
and on with this approach what will be the end? The end will be that
you know all about nothing. That will be the logical conclusion. I
would like to say that my way is just the opposite approach: to know
less and less about more and more. And what will be the ultimate
result? One day you know nothing about all. And that is the
experience -- to know nothing about all. That's what I call
ignorance.

-- Osho
Rajneesh (Discourses on the Diamond Sutra)

"What
is compassion? Actually compassion is when you are reconciled with
this entire universe. There is nothing in this whole universe that
you are against. Think about that. Compassion means reverence for all
of life, everything is alive, there is no such thing as dead matter.
Everything has its own life. When you have reverence for life, you
respect everything, you have no animosity towards anyone or anything.
. . . Have you ever heard of a Sage or a liberated person, who was at
odds with anything in this world? You have to come to terms with
yourself."

-- Robert
Adams

"The
secret [of perpetural youth] is to live a life of discipline and to
dwell constantly on Truth. I do not repeat the mantra of old age; I
repeat the mantra of youth, and so I remain young. I love only Truth,
I find my fulfillment only in Truth, and as I live life and function
in that, I remain young. I don't repeat the mantras that create old
age, such as anxiety and craving for sense pleasures. There is no
youth like freedom from anxiety, and there is no old age like
anxiety."

--
Muktananda

2002

"Of
all footprints, that of the elephant is supreme; of all meditations,
that on death is supreme."

--
Mahaparanirvana Sutra

"The
door that leads us out of samsara is the wisdom that realizesthe
emptiness of self-existence. This wisdom is the direct remedy forthe
ignorance which is both a cause and effect of clinging to theself,
and which believes the self or 'I' to be inherently andindependently
existent. We then become addicted to this phantom I andtreasure
it as if it were a most precious possession. Wisdomrecognizes
that such an autonomously existing I is totally non-existent
and thus, by wisdom, ignorance is destroyed."

--
Lama Zopa

"We
speak of fulness and emptiness; of withering and decay. Itproduces
fulness and emptiness, but is neither fulness nor emptiness;it
produces withering and decay, but is neither withering nor decay.It
produces the root and branches, but is neither root nor branch;
itproduces
accumulation and dispersion, but is itself neitheraccumulated
nor dispersed."

--
Chuang Tzu

"Studying
texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your OriginalMind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an
invaluabletreasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of theclouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night."

--
Zen Master Ikkyu (15th cent.)

"Self-Realization
is the knowing in all parts of body, mind, andsoul
that you are now in possession of the kingdom of God; that youdo
not have to pray that it come to you; that God's omnipresenceis
your omnipresence; and that all that you need to do is improveyour
knowing."

--
Paramhansa Yogananda

"Gaining
at length human life, hard to win, and adulthood, and
anunderstanding
of the revealed teachings, one who looks not forliberation
in the Divine Self, deluded in heart, self-destroying,slays
himself through grasping at the unreal. Even though they recitethe
scriptures, and sacrifice to the gods, and fulfill all works,
andworship
the divinities -- without awakening to the unity of theDivine
Self, they attain not liberation, even in many aeons."

--
from Shankara's _Crest Jewel of Discrimination_ (9th cent. A.D.)

"Humanity
must die before divinity manifests itself. But thisdivinity
must, in turn, die before the higher manifestation of theBlissful
Mother takes place. It is on the bosom of dead divinity(Shiva)
that the Blissful Mother dances her dance celestial."

--
Teachings of Sri Ramakrishna

"God
the Father is the Absolute, Unmanifested, existing beyondvibratory
creation. God the Son is the Christ Consciousness (Brahmaor
Kutastha Chaitanya) existing within vibratory creation; thisChrist
Consciousness is the "only begotten" or sole reflection of
theUncreated
Infinite. Its outward manifestation or "witness" is Aum
orHoly
Ghost, the divine, creative, invisible power which structuresall
creation through vibration. Aum the blissful Comforter is heardin
meditation and reveals to the devotee the ultimate Truth."

--
Yogananda, _Autobiography of a Yogi_

"My
worship is of a very strange kind. In this, Ganga water is
notrequired.
No special utensils are necessary. Even flowers areredundant.
In this puja all gods have disappeared. And emptiness hasemerged
with euphoria."

--
Lahiri Mahasaya

"With
ignorance as condition, volitional activities come tobe;
with volitional activities as condition, consciousness comes tobe;
with consciousness as condition, name-and-form come to be;
withname-and-form
as condition, the sixfold base comes to be; with thesixfold
base as condition, contact comes to be; with contact ascondition,
feeling comes to be; with feeling as condition, cravingcomes
to be; with craving as condition, grasping comes to be; withgrasping
as condition, being comes to be; with being as condition,birth
comes to be; with birth as condition, aging, death, sorrow, andpain
come to be. This is the origin of the whole mass of suffering.Thus:
When things become manifest to the ardent meditating disciple,all
his doubts then vanish since he understands each thing along withits
cause."

--
from the Udana Sutta

"We
think we die. We think we live. We think we exist. All thisthinking
is nonfundamental truth. Learn to exist in the state ofnonexistence.
That is reality."

--
Yogi Bhajan

"There
seem to two kinds of searchers: those who seek to make theirego
something other than it is, i.e. holy, happy, unselfish (asthough
you could make a fish unfish), and those who understand thatall
such attempts are just gesticulation and play-acting; that thereis
only one thing that can be done, which is to disidentifythemselves
with the ego, by realising its unreality, and by becomingaware
of their eternal identity with pure being."

--
Wei Wu Wei

"You
are not asked in the midst of one functional activity to have
yourattention
on another in the mechanical and ritualistic manner of the
seeker.You
are asked to make the function that is given to you at that
moment,which
you are fulfilling as a responsibility, an expression of Satsang,
afulfillment
of the Guru's will. That very function itself can becomemeditation
on the Divine."

--
Bubba Free John

"The
manifested world is the reflection of one's restless breath;since
the realized person has already eaten his restless breath
bypracticing
Pranayam [Life-force Expansion] or Kriya [Inward Action],he
does not see any restlessness outside. His inner peace isreflected
in the world. As a result, he appears to be tranquil to theonlookers
even in situations which would normally find the averageperson
seriously disturbed."

--
Swami Satyeswarananda Giri, _Kriya: Finding the True Path_

"When
superconsciousness is established, meditation practice is
naturallyspontaneous.
Then, even when one is not formally meditating, the benefitsare
still enjoyed."

--
Lahiri Mahasaya (1828-1895)

Everything
exists only because it has a purpose. The moment that purposehas
been accomplished, everything disappears and existence is manifested
asself-existing
Self."

--
Meher Baba (1894-1969)

One
who is not credulous,who
realizes the Non-conditioned,who
has sundered the links of materiality,who
has blown out the fires of good and of evil,who
has transcended base attachements:That
one is an Arhat, an Attainer.

(Verse
97 of the Dhammapada, version by Petros)

A
Baul is ready to die any momentbecause
he has not wasted a single moment of life.He
has lived it as deeply as it was possible to live.He
has no complaint,he
has no grudge against life,and
he has nothing to wait for.So
if death comes, he is ready to live death also.He
embraces death.He
says: "Come in."He
becomes a host to death also. (Osho)

"The
Self is the primary guru; the secondary guru is only the one
whoinitiates.
To do and to teach is the secondary guru; to realize is theprimary.
The secondary guru brings you to the well of Truth, and the
primaryguru
is the one who drinks therefrom."

--
attributed to Nityananda of Ganeshpuri

"Knowledge
of evolution [of the universe], life, and dissolution thus leadsto
complete emancipation from the bonds of maya. Beholding the self in
thesupreme
Self, one gains eternal freedom."

--
Sri Yukteswar (1894-1936), Kaivalya Darsana IV:12

"The
teachings exist as an energy. And the energy, this abstract quality,
iswhat
we are really after. People always think they can gain
learning,knowledge,
and wisdom by taking a teaching in words. Words only representthe
shell or the crust of knowledge."

--
Swami Rudrananda (Albert Rudolph, 1928-1973)

Reality
itself is everlasting,Reality
shall not fall ill,Nor
shall it get old, nor pass away;To
realize this truth is nothing but to know the Way.Reality
we call the Way, or Truth, as it permeates through the universe.The
Way or Truth is always with God,And
God is the Way and or the Truth itself.

--
from The Holy Sutra by Masaharu Taniguchi (founder of Seicho-No-Ie)

"I
am dead already. Physical death will make no difference in my case. I
amtimeless
being. I am free of desire or fear, because I do not remember
thepast,
or imagine the future. Where there are no names and shapes, how
canthere
be desires and fear? With desirelessness comes timelessness. I
amsafe,
because what is not cannot touch what is. You feel unsafe, because
youimagine
danger. Of course, your body as such is complex and vulnerable
andneeds
protection. But not you. Once you realize your own unassailable
being,you
will be at peace."

--
Nisargadatta Maharaj, _I Am That_ (p. 260)

Lineage
vs. Univserality:"A true master, in the perfected sense, is
someone who is a statement of the culmination of all ways, even
though the form in which he or she manifests may be a vehicle for the
transmission of a certain lineage. Ramakrishna, ultimately, was a
vehicle for the path of devotion to the Mother. But when he had
completed his work, though he remained in the path of devotion to the
Mother, he was totally in the advait, non-dual state, way beyond the
Mother. So at the beginning is eclecticism, at the end is
universality, and in themiddle
is the lineage."

--
Ram Dass _Grist for the Mill_ p. 83

"Only
a very few people who have the samskara [inclinations] inherited
fromprevious
births can follow the Path of Knowledge. But if a true guru
isguiding
you, you will have no problem on any path."

--
Ammachi

Superconscious
Ecstasy: "Ecstasy, or true trance, is not an unconscious state,
nor a kind of mental chloroform or catalepsy. Nor is it pathological
in any sense. Indeed, unconsciousness would be no difficult
achievement, and certainly would not warrant years of painstaking
self-discipline to attain it. . . . Superconsciousness, on the other
hand, can be achieved only in the rapture of divine love."

"How
can a mirror see itself? Why would one cover gold with gold plate?
When a flame is already burning, a second flame cannot illumine it.
In the same way, whatever a Siddha may do can never be considered
action. To his vision, everything is That, neither good nor bad. This
is the nature of perfect Siddhahood."

--
Muktananda _Secret of the Siddhas_ 50

A greater
Personality sometimesPossesses
us which yet we know is ours:Or
we adore the Master of our souls.Then
the small bodily ego thins and falls;No
more insisting on its separate self,Losing
the punctilio of its separate birth,It
leaves us one with nature and with God.In
moments when the inner lamps are litAnd
the life's cherished guests are left outside,Our
spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.A
wider consciousness opens then its doors;Invading
from spiritual silencesA
ray of the timeless Glory stoops awhileTo
commune with our seized illumined clayAnd
leaves its huge white stamp upon our lives.

--
Aurobindo, "Savitri" (Book I Canto IV)

"When
you are determined to find it the right path comes from inside.
Firstthing
is firm determination. No one can learn from others if he has
noability
to learn. What we are learning is already inside of us; we are
notgetting
it from outside."

--
Baba Hari Dass, 'Silence Speaks'

"The
Self, the Ultimate Reality, cannot be known merely through study
ofscriptures,
nor through the activities of the intellect, nor through
hearinglectures
and discussions. It can be known only by those whom it appears
toselect
-- through what mysterious process none can say."

--
Katha Upanishad

"Space
is the reality of our existence. It is what is really real. It
isreality.
Space, Being, Consciousness, you can put different names on it.For
some reason we tend to identify ourselves as something else, some
kindof
experience, physical, mental, or emotional. In reality we are just
afunction
of space, that is all we are. Nothing more, nothing less.Space
functioning through us."

--
Neelam

In
the city of daily concerns of our circle of lifeScurry
the wicked cadavers of eight worldly thoughts.This
is where you can find the most frightening cemetary of all;This
is where you lamas should keep your midnight vigil among the
dead.

--
Lingrepa (12th cent. Tibet)

"To
live in the Self is not to dwell for oneself alone in the
Infinite,immersed
and oblivious of all things in that ocean of impersonal
self-delight;but
it is to live as the Self and in the Self equal in this embodiment
and allembodiments
and beyond all embodiments. This is the integral knowledge."

--
Aurobindo, Synthesis of Yoga 317

"The
Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most
powerfulof
all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least
frontallypresent
in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the
leastcreative.
Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the
veryreason
that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all
thedivine
energies."

--
Aurobindo

Comment
by Petros: Aurobindo's observation is true in regards to the mass
ofhumanity,
including the religions, which purport to touch the source ofDivine
Love but actually struggle most often to rise above merely
socialconsiderations.
In regards to the practitioner of yoga -- the meditator orthe
sadhak -- the goal is precisely to become able to bear greater
andgreater
potency of Divine Love, via the purification of the gross and
thenthe
subtle self.

"If
a man were deprived of his illusions and all that prevents him
fromseeing
reality -- if he were deprived of his interests, his cares,
hisexpectations
and hopes -- all his strivings would collapse, everything
wouldbecome
empty and there would remain an empty being, an empty body,
onlyphysiologically
alive. This would be the death of 'I,' the death ofeverything
it consisted of, the destruction of everything false
collectedthrough
ignorance or inexperience. All this will remain in him merely
asmaterial,
but subject to selection. Then a man will be able to choose
forhimself
and not have imposed on him what others like."

--
Gurdjieff, from Views from the Real World

"The
individual is a part of the cosmos. This body, this 'I,' is nothing
buta
microcosm of that macrocosmic universe. When we understand the
microlevel,
we are bound to understand the macro universe. Anyone who seeks
hereis
bound to reach there because this individuality is a part of that. .
. .Through
the study of the individual -- or even the atom -- the basis of
thewhole
universe can be understood."

--
Ajja (b. 1916)

"I
am asking: Why is it that though you listen to all this logically,
and Ihope
with a healthy mind, this does not light a fire so that you burn
withit?
Please ask yourselves, find out why you agree logically,
verbally,superficiallly,
yet it does not touch you deeply. If your money or your sexis
taken away, it will touch you. If your sense of importance is taken
away,then
you will struggle. . . . What changes man is to face all this, to
lookat
it and not always live on that very superficial level."

--
Krishnamurti, from The Awakening of Intelligence (340)

"The
highest teaching is that even the desire for liberation with all
itsmental
concomitants must be surpassed before the soul can be entirely
free.Therefore
not only must the mind be able to rise in abnormal states out
ofitself
into a higher consciousness, but its waking mentality also must
beentirely
spiritualized."

--
Aurobindo, from Synthesis of Yoga p. 380

It
is foolish to carry one's burdens upon one's shoulders, like the man
whocarried
his suitcase upon his head while riding in the train. Whether he
sethis
burden down or carried it himself, the train actually was carrying
itall
the same."

--
Ammachi (Smithfield R.I. 7-13-02)

"In
meditation we are in the state -- or moving toward it -- of sending
onlyone
set of signals at a time. The effect of this on our physiology is
positiveand
there is a strong tendency to normalize reactions, to
behavephysiologically
in a more relaxed and healthy manner. Tension and anxietyindicators
are reduced and our metabolic rate and heartbeat slow. There is
anincrease
in mental awareness and alertness and a decrease in
physiologicaltension."

--
Lawrence LeShan, _How to Meditate_.

"Everybody
has enough personal power for something. The trick for the warrioris
to pull his personal power away from his weaknesses to his
strengths."

--
Castaneda, _The Second Ring of Power_

"He
who is the high and the low, the saint and the sinner, the god and
theworm,
Him worship; the visible, the knowable, the real, the
omnipresent;break
all other idols. In whom there is neither past life nor future
birth,nor
death nor going nor coming, in whom we always have been and always
willbe
one, Him worship; break all other idols."

--
Swami Vivekananda

"Most
people think that an enlightened Buddhist teacher is a fireman;
hisjob
is to put the fire out so that you can live in your home safely.
Butseeker
beware! A fully enlightened Buddhist teacher is an arsonist! His
jobis
to set your spirit on fire -- by feeding the flames of your soul
withlove."

--
Zen Master Rama (1950-1998)

"Some
say self-nature is one, and other-nature is a second; others
sayself-nature
and other-nature are but two aspects of the same thing. Lookdeeply!
Learn that self-nature and other-nature are but two names
forNothing."

--
Bodhidharma

One
must restrain oneself from expressing energy that in no way fulfills
thecapacity
for growth. This requires us to raise the level of energy above
thesituation
and then allow the situation to disappear. Energy risingcontinually
to a higher plane must attract an outside force. Each time weraise
our consciousness through our will, it is like creating a ladder
thatcan
be used to climb to any height. If there is no immediate situation
totranscend,
it can be created through the capacity of a human being to
sufferconsciously;
that is, he can remove something from his ordinary life inorder
to create a void, which allows higher energy to enter him and
raisethe
level of his situation. It is like removing less productive plants
froma
garden to allow more profitable ones to grow.

--
from _Behind the Cosmic Curtain_ (Swami Rudrananda, 1928-1973)

"One
day, as I was answering a question on the subject of death,
thefollowing
words came to me: 'You are not afraid of death, you are afraid
oflife.'
Thinking over that response, I realized how true it was. Our fear
ofdeath
is all the greater when we have not dared to live. In fact, if
youstop
fearing life, you can no longer fear death because you will
havediscovered
within yourself what Life really is. (Not your own life, but
theunique
and universal Life that nourishes us.) And it becomes obvious
thatsuch
life is independent of birth and death."

--
Arnaud Desjardins

"Some
people take in outside impressions very easily but just as
quicklypass
them out again -- in talking, laughing, all the contacts of life.
Sonothing
can accumulate within. They need inner impressions to fix a point
ofgrowth.
Other people's centre of gravity is much more on inner
impressions,perceptions,
understandings. But unless these inner impressions areconstantly
aerated with outer impressions, they begin to ferment, turn todreams
and fumes. For such people a constant flow of outer impressions
isabsolutely
necessary. . . . The whole thing is that the inner and outershall
balance, harmonize."

--
Rodney Collin, _The Theory of Conscious Harmony_

"We're
not going to get to heaven by transcending the body, but through
thebody.
The job is to cease defining the body the way it has been defined
bythe
illusions of ego and allow the body its organically innocent
instinct."

--
Lee Lozowick, _The Alchemy of Love and Sex_

"We
have to live our life in the world and be occupied with worldly
affairs,and
reach the highest stage in spite, or rather, because of it. For
thegreater
is the limitation, the greater will be the ultimate perfection
byovercoming
it."

--
Bhai Sahib on limitation and overcoming

"The
soul comes into this world to gain experiences. So we are greedy
toexperience;
and now I am greedy and selfish again: greedy after Truth. Butthis
kind of selfishness is a good kind of selfishness. As long as we are
inthe
physical body and there is the sense of the 'I,' selfishness will
alwaysbe
-- it cannot be avoided. At least there should be a good kind
ofselfishness
leading us towards the goal."

--
Bhai Sahib

"It
is so much easier to throw oneself into social and political
activitythan
to understand life as a whole; to be associated with any
organizedthought,
with political or religious activity, offers a respectable
escapefrom
the pettiness and drudgery of everyday life. With a small heart you
cantalk
of big things and of the popular leaders; you can hide your
shallownesswith
the easy phrases of world affairs; your restless mind can happily
andwith
popular encouragement settle down to propagate the ideology of a new
orof
an old religion. . . . There is hope only in the integration of
theseveral
processes of which we are made up. This integration does not
comeinto
being through any ideology, or through following any
particularauthority,
religious or political; it comes into being only throughextensive
and deep awareness. This awareness must go into the deeper layersof
consciousness and not be content with surface responses."

--
Krishnamurti (from Commentaries on Living I)

"It
is said that Truth is nearer to us than even our own heart. In spite
ofthis
nearness, few know what is really within them, their eyes being
turnedto
outward things; but only turn inward, and one sees the Truth
revealedinstant
by instant."

--
Ibn Arabi

"The
Buddha spoke: 'Often, always unclean, ultimately putrid: look,
Nanda,at
this physical heap you call the body. Through contemplation of that
whichis
foul, you develop your mind of awareness, making it
one-pointed,ultimately
whole and free.' Considering things thus, not tiring, for many aday
and many a night, I, Nanda, with my own discernment analyzing this
body,saw
the truth of what was spoken. And as I examined it, this body, as
itactually
is, was seen within and without. Then was I disenchanted with myold
fascination with the body; mindful, detached, calmed was I.
Unbound."

--
Buddhist Sutra Therigatha Ch. 5

"We
should be willing to test our so-called or assumed accomplishment if
ourcontext
is self-awareness. The very willingness to intentionally test
ourrevelations
is itself proof of our growth or lack of it. Real knowledgeholds
up under the most exhaustive analysis or examination,
whilepresumptions
that are founded on mere idle gossip or illusory principles ofEgo
crumble into angry defensiveness or violence upon the
lightestchallenge."

--
Lee Lozowick, from Zen Gamesmanship: The Art of Bridge (1980)

Many
teachers are there, well-read in the Vedas and in the texts of
wiseones,
who become well known through their words; not so many teachers
arethere
who have truly attained for themselves, and become known for deeds
aswell
as words; rarest of all and hard to find is one who in fact lives
thehighest
Truth, and can transmit this to others with or without words as
hesees
fit.

--
Kula Arnava Tantra 13.105

"A
man who lives from moment to moment will have many contradictions.
Hecannot
be very consistent; only dead people can be consistent. A man who
isreally
alive each moment goes on changing; because life changes, so
hechanges.
He is never out of tune with life; he is always in tune with it.And
of course life is inconsistent, so he is inconsistent. A truly
freeperson
is so vast, he is bound to have contadictions."

--
Osho Rajneesh, _I Say Unto You_ Vol I.

"We
give too much importance to individuality. This consciousness in the
bodyremains
only so long as the body lasts. We think that when the body
isdestroyed
the consciousness is also destroyed. It is not destroyed; it
becomesone
with the universal consciousness. This beingness, which is our most
prizedpossession
and which we want to retain at all costs, is dependent on the
bodyand
will only last as long as the time limit for each individual
existence."

--
Nisargadatta Maharaj, _Seeds of Consciousness_

"If
you yearn for the eight worldly concerns, you are a worldly person;
ifyou
ignore this life you are a Dharma practitioner. Geshe Potowa
askedDromtoenpa,
'What is the fine dividing line between Dharma and non-Dharma?'Drom
replied, 'It is Dharma if it becomes an antidote to delusions; it
isnot
Dharma if it does not. If all worldly people do not agree with it, it
isDharma;
if they do, it is not Dharma.'"

--
Pabongka Rinpoche, _Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand_

"You
might have such concentration that you cannot hear a drum beaten
rightbeside
your ear, but it will be useless if you do not have this mind
[themind
of bodhichitta, awakened compassion]. . . . . Seeing visions
oftutelary
deities, achieving clairvoyance and miraculous powers, or
havingmountain-range-firm
concentration are useless on their own; meditate on loveand
compassion!"

--
quoted by Pabongka Rinpoche in _Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand_

"He
who has found the bliss of the eternal is no more afflicted by
thethought,
'Why have I not done this good? Why have I done this non-good?'They
who have found the self are afflicted no more by such thoughts of
goodand
non-good, self and other."

--
Taitiriya Upanishad

"Some
people are now engrossed in this life and feel, 'I should
practice';many
people have already reached the time when they regret not
havingpracticed
Dharma. When we see these people we should see the damage
theiractions
did them; we should have the courage not to attach any importance
tothe
meaningless actions that, every day, leave us no time for
Dharmapractice.
We must practice as much Dharma as we can before Yama, the Lord
ofDeath,
strikes."

--
Pabongka Rinpoche

"These
demons of one's own tendencies -- desires, hatreds, attachments
--arise
from one's mind; not recognizing the nature of your own mind,
notrecognizing
the mind as void, not recognizing the mind as the result of
theconditions
that arose to generate it, and thus prone to vanish someday,
manyinner
demons will come to disturb your serenity. Once seen as what it
is,the
mere result of conditioning, these inner demons no longer have power
todistract
you from seeing into your true nature: unconditioned freedom."

--
Vajrayana teaching on mind

2003

JAN
2003

"Each
practice is also a complete path in itself in which . . . all the
othersare
included. Even the preliminaries, and indeed the individual elements
ofthe
preliminaries, can in themselves constitute a complete path
toenlightenment.
In particular, the Guru Yoga is the essence of all paths.
Theteachers
of the lineage often say that all practices should be done in
themanner
of Guru Yoga. Total openness and devotion to a realized teacher is
themost
sure and rapid way to progress."

--
Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher, xxxvii

"There
is no mystery whatever - only the inability to perceive
theobvious....The
supposed or apparent 'mystery' is due to the objectiveinexistence
of pure non-objectivity - which is the Buddha-nature,
becauseobjectivity
is only conceptual, and non-objectivity is incompatible with
anydegree
of positivity. Huang Po said it categorically, 'Our
originalBuddha-nature
is, in highest truth, devoid of any atom of objectivity.'"

--
Wei Wu Wei, "All Else Is Bondage"

"The
self is put together, made up, and the self is _not_ when the parts
aredissolved.
But in illusion the self separates itself from its qualities inorder
to protect itself, to give itself continuity, permanency. It
takesrefuge
in its qualities through separating itself from them. The
selfasserts
that it is this and it is that; the self, the I, modifies,
changes,transforms
its thoughts, its qualities, but this change only gives strengthto
the self, to its protective walls. But if you are aware deeply you
willperceive
that the thinker and his thoughts are one; the observer is
theobserved."

--
J. Krishmamurti (qtd in Weeraperuma, _Sayings of J. Krishnamurti_)

"The
'me' cannot give itself up. All that it can do is be quiet; and
itcannot
be quiet without understanding the whole structure and the meaning
ofthe
'me.' Either that structure and the meaning can be understood
totally,immediately,
or not at all; and that's the only way; there is no other way.If
you say, 'I will practice, I will gradually work at it till the me
dies,'then
you have fallen into a different kind of trap, which is the same
'me.'"

--
J. Krishnamurti

"Satsang
means: always choose the company of the superior. The mind willlead
you to choose the company of the inferior. Be alert and avoid
this,because
with the inferior you will become inferior. More and more the ray
ofconsciousness
will be lost into darkness. . . . The ego has to be left.Satsang
means living against the ego, transcending the ego, always
seekingthe
superior." -- Osho, from The Mustard Seed

FEB
2003

"A
visitor said to Sri Bhagavan, 'You are Bhagavan. So you would know
when Ishall
get jnana [enlightenment.] Tell me when I shall be a jnani.
SriBhagavan
replied, 'If I am Bhagavan there is no one besides the Self
--therefore
no jnani or ajnani [unenlightened ones.] If otherwise, I am asgood
as you are and know as much as yourself. Either way I cannot
answeryour
question.'"

--
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, 54.

In response
to a visitor's question about using the affirmation, "I
amBrahman"
as a method of meditation. Brahman is here taken as a word-symbolof
Ultimate Reality or God.

"'I
am Brahman' is only a thought. Who says it? Brahman itself does not
sayso.
What need is there for it to say it? Nor can the real 'I' say so.
For'I'
always abides as Brahman. To be saying it is only a thought.
Whosethought
is it? All thoughts are from the unreal 'I.' Remain withoutthinking.
So long as there is thought there will be fear. . . . 'I amBrahman'
is only an aid to concentration. It keeps off other thoughts,
thenone
thought alone persists. See whose is that thought. It will be found
tobe
from 'I.' Wherefrom is the 'I'-thought? Probe into it. The
'I'-thoughtwill
vanish. The Supreme Self will shine forth of itself. No further
effortis
needed."

--
Talks With Sri Ramana Maharshi, p 169 (15 June 1936)

"Absence
of thoughts does not mean a blank. There must be one to know
theblank.
Knowledge and ignorance are of the mind. They are born of
duality.But
the Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. It is light itself. There
isno
necessity to see the Self with another Self. There are no two
Selves.What
is not Self is non-self. The non-self cannot see the Self. The Self
hasno
sight or hearing. It lies beyond these -- all alone, as
pureconsciousness."

--
Talks With Sri Ramana Maharshi, 200 (8 Sept 1936)

"Man
can exist in two ways only: there is no evolution. Either you exist
asan
ignorant man, unaware, in deep sleep -- then greed, anger, ambition,
egowill
follow you -- or you become awake. Awakening is a jump. Then the
secondcategory
of man arises; then love, compassion follows you. Then there is
nogreed,
no anger."

--
Osho in _The True Sage_

"Now
if you sit in the posture of a Buddha and if your body is exactly
inthe
same condition, you will find it easier to enter the mental state
ofBuddha.
This is because mental states are related to bodily states. If
youwalk
as a Buddha walked, if you breathe as a Buddha breathed, if you
liedown
as Buddha did, it will be easier for you to attain the mental state
ofBuddha.
Conversely, if you attain the mental state of Buddha, your
walking,your
sitting and your various body postures will resemble those of
Buddha.Both
of these, mind and body, are parallel."

--
Osho in The Mystic Experience

"All
that we can dialectically conclude is that for anything to
becomprehended,
there must necessarily be a comprehender, and it is thiscomprehender
that is 'bound' because he is caught in a perpetual regression;that
is to say, the comprehending subject would, in the duality of
thesplit-mind
in phenomenality, again become the object of anothercomprehender.
The 'who' can never be eliminated. . . . And this abandonmentof
the search (which includes the abandonment of the seeker too) is
itselfthe
finding; the finding that the seeker is the sought; they are
notdifferent."

"Enlightening
experiences can help in dealing with facts by showing you thatyou
are a completely flexible whatever-it-is, capable of existing on
manydifferent
vibration levels, both within and above the physical plane. Onceyou
know that the facts will be different on every level, you are
lesslikely
to fight the facts of any particular plane. As your awareness
opensup,
you will be able to choose the level you want, and you will have
moreenjoyable
facts to deal with. There is no being in the universe morepowerful
than you, but there are also none less powerful than you. Thisshould
be the starting point of all your behavior towards other people.
Ioften
say to myself: Let my intentions not attempt to contradict
thenecessary
laws of our relations as equal beings."

--
Thaddeus Golas, "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment"

MARCH
2003

"It
is always of value to experience the presence of a man of attainment.
Inthis,
the 'feeling response' is truly of greater significance than
theresponse
to the literal truth or falsity of anything he says. He is true,even
if his statements may be only relatively true. If one feels that such
aone
is true in himself, then anything he says must be taken seriously,
ifnot
necessarily literally."

--
Sri Madhava Ashish (qtd. in In Search of the Unitive Vision)

"Appearances
external and the mind are one. Shatter then your theory ofduality
and plurality. Since birth and death are themselves pairs of
naturalillusory
opposites, mere phenomenal appearances -- becoming and 'begoing'cast
upon the screen of time -- they too are the voidness, 'sunyata.'"

--
from Dancing with the Void (Sunyata)

"War
is the ultimate expression of the inner conflict. There is war going
onall
the time, in the business world, in the political world, in the world
ofthe
religious people, between the various gurus, the various sects,
thevarious
dogmas. Where there is inner conflict, there cannot but be
outwardconflict."

"Peace
is a state of being in which all conflicts and all problems
haveceased;
it is not a theory, not an ideal to be achieved after
tenincarnations,
ten years or ten days. As long as the mind has not understoodits
own activity, it will create more misery; and the understanding of
themind
is the beginning of peace."

--
from Sayings of J. Krishnamurti

"The
virtue of a house is to be well-placed; of the mind, to be at ease,
insilence
like that of Space; of societies, to be well-disposed and just;
ofgovernments,
to maintain quietude and stability; of work, to be skillfullyand
efficiently performed; and of all motion, to be made at the right
time,in
the right manner, and for the right ends."

--
Tao Te Ching 8

"If
you want to be expert in religious teaching, submit yourself to
theteaching
of your self; The one who hears the teaching of self, hears
theteaching
of the Prophet. You are the greatest book of God and the
mosteloquent
word of God; If you want to be the foremost interpreter, be awareof
that nature of yours. . . . Do you understand, you are the talking
bookof
God? The One who cannot get into the whole of earth and sky made
yourheart
Its home. The qualities of Mankind are the qualities of God; only
thebearer
of Truth knows it; In fact, you know that that's what is timeless
andspaceless."

--
Gaibi (17th cent. Turkish sufi)

"All
these ideas of yours are binding you. Once you understand thatthere
is no knowledge, that it is all ignorance, you are on yourproper
level. You have the idea that I have the knowledge; this isonly
an idea. Honestly speaking, there is no knowledge whatsoever. Itis
beyond all imagination, it has no attributes. It cannot beimagined
at all."

--
Nisargadatta Maharaj, _Seeds of Consciousness_

"There
is, in fact, no I. There is a multitude. He who knows this
ceaseseven
to think of himself as I. He speaks of 'it,' or 'this.' Meanwhile
heobserves
how different I's come and go -- actors in his personal
theater.Something
new develops in him. One who observes. In one part of his being,this
man is becoming objective toward himself. In one part of his being
hehas
ceased to lie. Insofar as he as ceased to lie, he is becoming
liberated.The
Observer combines objectivity with discrimination. . . . the Observer
isthe
forerunner of the Master."

--
Robert S. deRopp, The Church of the Earth(Summarizing
Gurdjieffian concepts)

"Let
the journey begin from any way. Whether you go from the Absolute
(orGod)
to the Void (or complete non-existence), or from the Void to
theAbsolute,
either way, the end of the journey is silence, the end of thejourney
cannot truly be spoken of; for words are of the path, not the
goal."

--
Osho Rajneesh

APRIL
2003

"Being
spiritual does not mean to become as esoteric and as different as
youpossibly
can, but to become like a solvent that can melt away thedifferences
between people until only the essential thing is left. If wereally
understand what we're doing, we ought to get it on and find
essentialagreement
with anybody."

--
Stephen Gaskin, _This Season's People_

"Your
task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of
thebarriers
within yourself that you have built against it. It is not
necessaryto
seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is
false."

--
A Course in Miracles, text, Ch. 16

"Objects
can have no 'free-will': they can have no 'will' of any kind,
forthey
are only an aspect of Subject, but the energy which constitutes
theirappearance
may be misapplied and be expended ineffectually and in oppositionto
the inevitable sequence of events in time and space. This
inconsequentstruggling
may be misconstrued as 'will'. Subject, as pure reality, is freefrom
constraint, but as one element of a dualism it is conditioned by
theother
element thereof, which is its object. Dualistically, therefore, it
isnot
'free'. There is no 'free-will' in duality. There is no
'predestination'in
reality."

--
Wei Wu Wei

"Why
do false Gurus exist? It is our own fault. We choose our Gurus just
aswe
choose our politicians. The false Guru market is growing because
thefalse
disciple market is growing. Because of his blind selfishness, a
falseGuru
drowns people, and because of his blind selfishness and
wrongunderstanding,
a false disciple gets trapped."

--
Swami Muktananda

"Magicians
studying Will are learning to contain an immense amount of
energywith
their egos. The most energy that you can possibly contain with your
egois
less than not having ego and being open to everybody else, because
thenyou
have access to everybody's energy -- the Universe's energy -- and it
isso
much more than anybody can possibly contain."

--
Stephen Gaskin, _This Season's People_

"When
one is deducted from one, nothing remains and that nothing is
denotedby
a zero. And that zero has no value. Similarly when the perceiver and
theperceived
both are negated conceptualization is absent."

"That
that we cannot talk about, we cannot talk about. That that we
are,that
we cannot explain, cannot be discussed. That that we are that has
nobeginning
and no end cannot be discussed. That that we are that has
nobeginning
and no end can't be classified. We say things like that because
wedon't
even know what to say, because we try to search for something to
saythat
you cannot even say. But it gives me pleasure to try to search
forsomething
to say about That that I can't say anything about."

--
Yudhishtara(an
enlightened student of Sri Poonjaji)

"To be
at once a passive and perfectly pure mirror, turned
simultaneouslywithout
and within, to the results of the manifestation and the sources
ofthis
manifestation, so that the consequences may be placed before
theguiding
will; and to be also the realizing activity of that will: this
moreor
less is what a human being ought to be. To combine these two
attitudes ofpassive
receptivity and realizing activity is precisely the most difficultof
all things."

--
The Mother (Mira Alfassa), letter 21 Jun 1914

Excerpt
from Hakuin's Song of Zazenversion
by Petros

All
beings are by nature the Buddha,just
as ice is by nature only water --apart
from water there is no ice,apart
from beings no Buddha!

It's
sad that beings ignore what is nearin
their 'search' for truth seemingly far --like
one standing in a pool of fresh water,crying
out in thirst!

Lost
in such self-imposed ignorancewe
wander through the cosmos --when
will we be freed of rebirth and seeking?

It
is clear that cause and effect are one --this
is the truth of the non-dual path:knowing
form and formless as one --knowing
movement and stillness as one --knowing
thought and no-thought as one --knowing
worldly pleasures as the dharma.

Boundless
is the sky of samadhi,bright
is the moon of wisdom.Knowing
all this, nirvana is here:this
place is the Pure Land,this
body is the Buddha.

--
Hakuin (1685-1768).

Song of
Enlightenmentattributed
to Ch'an Master Yongjia Xuanjue (7th cent.)(Excerpts)

When
the Dharma body awakens completely,There
is nothing at all.

The
source of our self-natureIs
the Buddha of innocent truth.

Mental
and physical reactions come and goLike
clouds in the empty sky;

Greed,
hatred, and ignorance appear and disappearLike
bubbles on the surface of the sea.

When
we realize actuality,There
is no distinction between mind and thingAnd
the path to hell instantly vanishes.

Once
we awaken to the Tathagata-Zen,The
six noble deeds and the ten thousand good actionsAre
already complete within us.

In
our dream we see the six levels of illusion clearly;After
we awaken the whole universe is empty.

No
bad fortune, no good fortune, no loss, no gain;Never
seek such things in eternal serenity.

For
years the dusty mirror has gone uncleaned,Now
let us polish it completely, once and for all.

"The
way to an eternal and an immortal body is to know God aright. How
canyou
do that? By discovering your true identity and learning who 'I'
is."

--
Joel Goldsmith, Infinite Way Letters 1959

Petros
comments: Knowing the "I" is to know that "I" is
not the body,although
a body may appear to the "I" from time to time. It is to
know thatthe
cosmos, including the body of course, inheres within the
consciousnessthat
manifests as "I." As the consciousness is immortal -- being
the originof
the sense of time -- so is the body immortal, though it gives
theappearance
of going through changes and suffering entropy. (See alsoPetros'
essay, "The Metaphysical Doctrine of Immortality,"
athttp://home.earthlink.net/~xristos/immortal.htm.)

"I
have learned what I have learned only after my teachers had freed me
ofthe
habit of attaching myself to what I regarded as teachers and
teachings.Sometimes
I had to do nothing at all for long periods. Sometimes I had tostudy
things which I could not link in my mind, no matter how I tried,
withhigher
aspirations."

--
Zikira ibn Al-Yusufi

JUNE
2003

"Unlike
the parable, the the meaning of the teaching story cannot
beunravelled
by ordinary intellectual methods alone. Its action is direct
andcertain,
upon the innermost part of the human being, an action incapable
ofmanifestation
by means of the emotional or intellectual apparatus. Theclosest
we can come to describing its effect is to say that it connects
witha
part of the individual which cannot be reached by any other
convention."

--
Idries Shah, from "Caravan of Dreams."

The three
gifts of Rabi'a to Hasan of Basra

One
time the great woman Sufi adept Rabi`a al-Adawiyya sent Hasan of
Basrathree
things -- a piece of wax, a needle, and a hair.

"Be
like the wax," she said. "Illumine the world, and yourself
burn."

"Be
like the needle, always be working naked, and with one
pointedness,piercing
any obstacle."

"When
you have done these first two things, only a hair's breadth
separatesyou
from final Truth."

Hasan
asked Rabi`a, "Do you desire for us to get married?"

"The
tie of marriage applies to those who have being," Rabi`a
replied. "Herebeing
has disappeared, for I have become naughted to self and exist
onlythrough
Him. I belong wholly to Him. I live in the shadow of His control.You
must ask my hand of Him, not of me."

"How
did you find this secret, Rabi`a?" Hasan asked.

"I
lost all `found' things in Him," Rabi`a answered.

"How
do you know Him?" Hasan inquired.

"You
know the `how'; I know the `howless'," Rabi`a said.

--
From Attar's "Memorial of the Saints."

"And
so it is in the usual person's case, it is impossiblefor
someone to see that they are not fully awake, until theyactually
awaken. Then it is obvious. People believe their ideasare
true and that they ARE those ideas. But like a dream, uponawakening,
they discover they are only ideas."

--
Sri Donji

"The
candle illumines not for itself. The eye sees not itself, yet with
theaid
of the candle may see much. In the same way, the wise teacher is
wisenot
for himself, but for those who need to see. Yet even a wise
teacher,though
helpful, cannot help the unwise see themselves unless he learns to
bea
mirror as well as a candle!"

--
Ancient Sufi saying

JULY
2003

"When
we commit ourselves to the Work, we commit ourselves, once andfor
all, to change. There is no way out. There is no back doorthrough
which we can escape. We have made our commitment outside oftime,
and thus have set out on what is called 'the path of service.'We
have truly become channels for necessary change -- but change
whenthe
time is right, when everything is properly prepared."

--
Reshad Feild, from Steps to Freedom

"A
real Master is one who kindles and sustains the Light of Knowledge
orspirituality
in the disciple, destroying ignorance. Such a Master is
aSelf-Realized
Soul. One can see and experience all the eternal virtues
likeuniversal
love, renunciation, patience, forbearance, endurance, etc., in him.
Hewill
have equal vision and perfect balance of mind in all circumstances.
Therewill
not be even an iota of selfishness in him. He will have no desires
exceptthe
good and well-being of the entire creation."

--
Sri Amritanandamayi Ma

"Knowing
the brief nature of mortality, one must seek the shortest way and
thefastest
means to get back home; that is, through devotion and meditation,
toturn
the spark within you into a raging blaze; to be merged with and to
identifywith
that greater fire which originally ignited that spark."

--
Nityananda of Ganeshpuri

"Though
philosophers call man the microcosm,Wise
ones call him the macrocosm.In
outward form you are the microcosm,But
in reality you are the macrocosm.Seemingly
the branch is the cause of the fruit,But
really the branch exists because of the fruit --For
were he not impelled by desire of fruit,The
gardener would never have planted the tree."

--
from The Masnavi of Rumi, Book IV

"When
he has renounced the world so that he does not take to it on
accountof
his own desires, nor in compliance with the urges of his own ego,
butmerely
to fulfill the commandment of God, he is then driven to speak to
theworld
and establish contact with it because now there is a portion for
himin
it which cannot be discarded and which has not been created for any
otherperson."

"When
you say, 'Whatever I do is Buddha nature, so it doesn't matter what
Ido,
and there is no need to practice zazen,' that is already a
dualisticunderstanding
of our everyday life. If it really does not matter, there isno
need for you even to say so. As long as you are concerned about what
youdo,
that is dualistic. If you are not concerned about what you do, you
willnot
say so. If you sit, you will sit. When you eat, you will eat. That
isall."

--
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Shunryo Suzuki)

"Those
who can sit perfectly physically usually take more time to attain
thetrue
way of Zen, the actual feeling of Zen, the marrow of Zen. But those
whofind
great difficulties in practicing Zen will find more meaning in it. So
Ithink
that sometimes the best horse may be the worst horse, and the
worsthorse
can be the best one."

--
from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

AUGUST
2003

Creative
Stress as a Transformative Agent

In
the 'mundane' world, stress is almost universally viewed as something
tobe
avoided at all costs. Those of us on the Path of Transcendence,
however,cannot
afford to assume this as our view. We find that once we have gone
anydistance
in our path, the need to actively and consciously create a
certainamount
of stress for ourselves is a necessity for further growth
andawareness.
Naturally, the amount of stress that we can handle will vary
fromindividual
to individual -- a level that might go unnoticed in one personmight
prove intolerably distracting for another. The idea is to
knowourselves
and to keep pushing the limits for ourselves. Then, we find thatour
awareness becomes more refined, our mindfulness operates
moreconsistently,
and our practice gets deeper. As with any part of ourpractice,
it's important to keep our inner workings to ourselves, or
betweenourselves
and our teacher -- making a 'scene' of our practice is justanother
form of negative reactivity and only squanders energy.

"Assuming
dogmatic opinions as a young person puts one in the position
ofhaving
receptors for certain ideas. When such persons go into the world,
theworld
that they encounter is pre-conditioned by the idea receptors.
Thedogmatic
opinions are the other end of the receptors. Some young people
gointo
the world bristling with opinions like a porcupine and promptly
getsomething
stuck on each quill. At this point all learning stops unless thereis
some great cleansing of mind. All the opinions having met their mate,
theyoung
mind's learning receptors are stuffed with things which are after
allonly
extentions of opinions already held."

Master
Joshu replied, 'If you know how to practice, do it. If you do
notknow
how to practice, you'll probably fall into the concept
ofcause-and-effect.'--
from Sayings of Ch'an Master Joshu

SEPT
2003

'The
entire universe is doing zazen in the same way that your body is
doingzazen.
When all parts of your body are practicing zazen, then that is
howthe
whole universe practices zazen. Each mountain is standing and each
riveris
flowing independently. All parts of the universe are participating
intheir
practice.'

"It is
vain for an object to seek the subject which it is -- for only
thesubject
could seek, and it cannot find itself by seeking -- for the soughtis
necessarily elsewhere than that which seeks it, is in a different
momentof
time and in a different area of space from those of that which
isseeking.
The apparent seeker, however, is what time is and what space is,that
is, inferential concepts, and the sought is just another. . . . In
thetotal
absence of all such concepts there is nothing to seek, nothing
tofind,
and no entity to do either."

--
Wei Wu Wei, "Open Secret," Ch. 66 (The Quest)

1.A
monk asked, "What about it when I seek to be Buddha?"The
master said, "What a tremendous waste of energy!"The
monk said, "What about it when I'm not wasting any energy?"The
master said, "In that case, you are Buddha."

2.The
master was leaving the main hall when he saw a monk bowing to him.
Themaster
struck him with his stick. The monk said, "But bowing is a
goodthing!"
The master said, "A good thing is not as good as nothing."

"I
take life as a whole and I am incapable of viewing it in bits and
pieces;it
is already the whole, but because it has been viewed in fragments for
solong
it has become perverted. There is no politics, no morality,
noreligion;
there is life, there is God, whole and unfragmented. It has to
besought,
recognized and lived in all its forms, therefore I shall continue
tospeak
on all its forms."

--
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), from A Cup of Tea

OCTOBER
2003

"The
saints look very calm and peaceful, not because they aren't
suffering,but
because they're not reacting. It is reactivity that creates tension
andanxiousness
or uptightness." (557)

"To
begin practice with some very high and refined esoteric technology
isuseless
because all refined esoteric technology is designed to be
appliedafter
we have dealt with the grip of neurosis." (594)

--
from As It Is: A Year on the Road with a Tantric Teacher by M.
Young(The
quotes are from American spiritual teacher Lee Lozowick)

"This
word 'bhagwan' [lord] has been of immense use to me. I saw many
godmenin
India: Satya Sai Baba, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Muktananda, and
many'etceteranandas.'
I tried to fight them from the outside but it wasdifficult.
Then I thought it is better to be an insider and then fight, so
Ideclared
myself a Bhagwan, I became an insider -- and now I am giving them
ahard
time! It is as simple as that."

"I
never had a Master in all my past lives, but I have been with
manyenlightened
people. That has made my vision rich. I can understand Jesus
aseasily
as Krishna, I can penetrate the very heart of Mahavira as easily
asBuddha,
because I have accompanied many enlightened people down the ages.And
I have never been a follower to anybody, otherwise I would have
becomeobsessed
with tunnel vision."

--
from The Wild Geese and the Water (Discourses given in Pune, 1981)

"The
process of the Self's involution and evolution is viewed as a
universaldrama
of the eternal play of hide-and-seek, of creation and redemption,
ofmanifestation
and dissolution, of anabolism and catabolism, but the soleactor
in this drama is the one and only Self, playing an infinite number
ofroles
(such as you and me) without ceasing in the least to completely
remainitself,
spaceless and timeless, whole and undivided."

--
Ken Wilber, from The Spectrum of Consciousness (p 153)

"When
the opportune moment comes, there is no time for reasoning. If you
havenot
done your inquiring beforehand, there is most often shame. Reading
books andlistening
to talks are merely for the purpose of prior resolution. Above
all,the
Way of the Samurai should be in being aware that you do not know what
isgoing
to happen next, and in querying every item day and night. Victory
anddefeat
are matters of the temporary force of circumstances."

--
from the 'Hagakure' of Yamamoto Tsunemoto (18th cent.)

NOVEMBER
2003

"The
spirit listens only when the speaker speaks in gestures. And
gesturesdo
not mean signs or body movements, but acts of true abandon, acts
oflargesse,
of humor. As a gesture for the spirit, warriors bring out the bestof
themselves and silently offer it to the abstract."

--
Castaneda, from The Power of Silence

"The
Void (sunyata) is called emptiness because it cannot be an object
ofknowledge
(or consciousness). That is, it is only empty to us as subject
forwhom
every percept is object. This rendering as 'emptiness' has
causedendless
confusion -- for 'Void' is not that at all, but, on the
contrary,Reality
Itself."

--
Wei Wu Wei, from 'Why Lazarus Laughed,' Ch. 62

"Dissolve
the modifications of the mind, and an infinite power will
beunleashed
in you."

--
Patanjali

"The
less effort you consciously make, the faster and more powerful you
willbe."

--
Bruce Lee

DEC
2003

"I
am reminded again of the small village where I was born on 11
December of1931.
Why existence should have chosen that small village in the first
placeis
unexplainable. It is as it should be. . . .There was no school in
thevillage.
That is of great importance, because I remained uneducated foralmost
nine years, and those are the most formative years. After that,
evenif
you try, you cannot be educated. So in a way I am still
uneducated,although
I hold many degrees. Any uneducated man could have done it. And
notany
degree, but a first-class master's degree; that too can be done by
anyfool.
So many fools do it every year that it has no significance. What
issignificant
is that for my first years I remained without education. Therewas
no school, no road, no railway, no post office. What a blessing!"

--
Osho Rajneesh

"You
are at a phase, a stage of your development. We are in a state
ofbecoming
and as we go along, our consciousness actually can expand and
wepotentially
could experience more, so even that which you experience withyour
senses is not absolutely true. This may not seem possible to
manyreading
this, but I am speaking literally, not just metaphorically. But
inorder
for you to awaken to this truth, you have to see your
ownconditioning
and make thinking a conscious process. Some Buddhists call
thismindfulness."

--
Don James.

"When
a being becomes Truth, he reads into the hearts of all beings like
anopen
book. Then a person begins to communicate with all things and
allbeings.
. . . While an ordinary person can see the action of another,
theseer
can see the reason of the action also, and if his sight is
stillkeener,
he can see the reason of the person. He knows why an event
comes,whence
it comes, what is behind it, what is the cause of it, and behind
theseeming
cause what is the hidden cause; and if he wished to trace the
causebehind
the cause he could trace back to the primal cause, for the inner
lifeis
lived by living with the primal cause, by being in unity with the
primalcause."

--
Hazrat Inayat Khan

"The
moment you try to become intelligent, you cease to be
intelligent."--
J. Krishnamurti (from Think on These Things)

"I am
not giving you any secret formula of how to succeed. If I am giving
youanything,
it is a key of how not to succeed, of how to be a failure
andunworried;
how to move nameless, homeless, without any goal; how to be a
beggar--
what Jesus calls poor in spirit. A man who is poor in spirit is
egoless -- heis
the empty boat."

"The
eyes of a saint are always concentrated on the supreme self. The
moment heis
aware of himself, sainthood is lost."

--
Neem Karoli Baba

"The
energy which is expended in mere thinking, talking or writing is like
thesteam
which escapes through the whistle of the railway engine. The whistle
makesa
noise, and is even interesting, but it cannot drive the engine. No
amount ofwhistling
can move the engine forward. The steam has to be harnessed and
usedintelligently
in order that it may actually take the engine to its
destination.That
is why the sages have always insisted on practice rather than theory.
Thisapplies
particularly to those who want to know and realize God."

--
Meher Baba from Life At Its Best

"Three
things are necessary for a bird to fly: the two wings and the tail
asa
rudder for steering. Jnana (Knowledge) is the one wing, Bhakti (Love)
isthe
other, and Yoga is the tail that keeps up the balance. For those
whocannot
pursue all these three forms of worship together in harmony and
takeup,
therefore, Bhakti alone as their way, it is necessary always to
rememberthat
forms and ceremonials, though absolutely necessary for the
progressivesoul,
have no other value than taking us on to that state in which we
feelthe
most intense love to God."

--
Swami Vivekananda, "Bhakti Yoga"

"Devotee:
The Self is said to be covered by five sheaths or koshas. A
personhas
to surpass these one after the other.

Papa:
Who has got these sheaths you speak of? Atman? Jiva, they say,
isBrahman,
and who has got then these sheaths? Ramdas does not see any
sheathsanywhere.
Only Atman is there, and Atman is everything. Tattvas,
koshas,bhumikas:
these have no meaning if you look at them in the light of theAtman.
They seem to have no existence except in the imagination of
man.Atman
alone exists, and everything is Atman. The koshas also must be
Atman,if
there are any koshas at all. Everything that is and is not is
Atman.Then,
where does this question lead us to? It leads us to Him who
aloneexists.
Otherwise it is only a talk about the stages of spiritual
progress.But
there are no stages. Why should you go astray from that centre
andwander
about wool-gathering? Go to the centre, get fixed up there.
Whyshould
you go around on the circumference? The centre is the Truth
orReality."

--
from God Experience Vol II by Swami Ramdas

"All
saints are different forms of the Guru. Guru is Nirguna --
nameless,formless,
attributeless. He assumes forms to come and save us. He may comein
any form."

"Guru
is one. There are not many Gurus. He is the impersonal Reality or
Godassuming
forms for guiding humanity towards the goal."

"Guru
and disciple are one. This is the first lesson that Guru gives to
thedisciple."

--
Swami Ramdas, "God-Experience"

"It is
absurd to say that the world is unreal so long as we
ourselvesbelieve
that we (as the ego) are real. Only one who has seen the unrealityof
the ego can see the unreality of the world."

--
Ramakrishna

"I
have now come to a stage of realization in which I see that God
iswalking
in every human form and manifesting Himself alike through thesage
and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. Therefore when Imeet
different people I say to myself, 'God in the form of the saint,God
in the form of the sinner, God in the form of the righteous, Godin
the form of the unrighteous.'"

--
Ramakrishna

FEBRUARY

"The
Teacher is only the instrument of the Infinite. He is a channel for
theenergies
of the Divine, like a riverbed that allows water to
flowuninterruptedly
to the ocean. The river brings water to the land but is notthe
source of the water, which is from elsewhere."

--
Rama (Frederick Lenz)

"The
everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance
andopenness
to all situations and emotions, and to all people,
experiencingeverything
totally without mental reservations and blockages, so that onenever
withdraws or centralizes into oneself. This produces a
tremendousenergy
which usually is locked up in the process of mental evasion and
ageneral
running away from life experiences. . . . All aspects of
everyphenomenon
are completely clear and lucid. The whole universe is open
andunobstructed,
everything mutually interpenetrating. Seeing all thingsnakedly,
clear and free from obscurations, there is nothing to attain
orrealize.
The nature of things naturally appears and is naturally present
intime-transcending
awareness; this is complete openness."

--
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910 - 1991), Introduction to Dzogchen

Q. How many
of the thousands of Papa's devotees have attainedGod-realization
in this birth?

R.
So far as Ramdas is concerned, all of them are manifestations of
hiseternal
Beloved. . . . If Ramdas sees imperfection in anybody, this means
heis
not seeing Ram at all in them. If he sees Ram in them, there is
nothinglike
realization or non-realization. If he sees or feels himself one
withall,
then again that question does not arise.

--
Swami Ramdas, from God Experience

"When
the rays of the sun are made to pass through a prism, they
getdispersed
and become separate owing to refraction. If each of these rays
hadconsciousness,
it would consider itself as being separate from the otherrays,
forgetting entirely that at source and on the other side of the
prismit
had no separate existence. In the same way, the One Being descends
intothe
domain of maya and assumes a multiplicity which does not in fact
exist.The
separateness of individuals does not exist in reality but only
inimagination."

--
Meher Baba, from Discourses

"There
is not only physical space but the psychological dimension in
whichthought
covers itself -- as yesterday, today and tomorrow. So long as
thereis
an observer, space is the narrow yard of the prison in which there is
nofreedom
at all. . . . Freedom demands that you break the prison walls,though
you may enjoy the limited disorder, the limited slavery, the
toilwithin
this boundary."

--
J. Krishnamurti, The Only Revolution

"The
one who tunes himself not only to the external but to the inner
beingand
to the essence of all things gets an insight into the essence of
thewhole
being, and therefore he can to the same extent find and enjoy even
inthe
seed the fragrance and beauty which delight him in a rose. He so
tospeak
touches the soul of the thought. It is just as by seeing the plant
onemay
get an idea of the root. And in this way things unknown are known
andthings
unseen are perceived by the mystic, and he calls it revelation."

--
Hazrat Inayat Khan

"There
is no answer to the why -- the whys keep going. It doesn't mean
thatyou
lose interest in the whys. Often the more spiritual you get and the
moreyou
love all these things, part of you always wants to know why.
It'simpossible
not to want to know more whys because this is the dearest thingto
your heart and you want to know more about it. This was also true for
myteacher
Poonjaji, even until he passed away. On the one hand he would
saythese
things and then at the same time he would investigate a little
furtherand
further into his heart to try to find out a little bit more about
themystery.
Every time he found out a little bit more, he'd get happier -- buthe
always knew there was no end to it."

--
Yudhishtara 7.31.02

MARCH

"The
main obstacles to your success in your sadhana [practice] are your
feelingsof
'I' and 'mine.' "

--
Sai Baba of Shirdi

"Those
who have realized God are aware that free will is a mere appearance.
Inreality
man is a machine and God its Operator; man is the carriage and God
itsDriver."

--
from the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Ch. 18

"A
true teacher will constantly destroy the idols of him that students
attemptto
manufacture in their minds."

--
Rumi

APRIL

"The
seeking goes on until there is the realization by the
mind-intellectthat
what is being sought is impossible for the mind-intellect
tounderstand.
And then the mind-intellect surrenders."

"Even
the arising of the ego is a natural process. And when you even
acceptthe
ego, that is a very big step. When you do not consider it necessary
tofight
it, it is a big step forward in the understanding."

--
Ramesh Balsekar, from Your Head in the Tiger's Mouth, p 102

"The
expressions of the mind are all fragments of the mind. Each
fragmentexpresses
itself in its own way and contradicts other fragments. . . .Themind
lives in this confusion. A part of the mind says it must
understandanother
part, such as a dream, an action or a desire. So each fragment
hasits
own observer, its own activity; then a super-observer tries to
bringthem
all into harmony. The super-observer is also a fragment of the mind."

"The
brain is the result of time; it is conditioned to protect
itselfphysically,
but when it tries to protect itself psychologically then the'me'
begins, and all our misery starts. It is the effort to protect
itselfpsychologically
that is the affirmation of the 'me.' "

--
J. Krishnamurti, from The Urgency of Change

"It is
greed that asks the question, 'How can I be attentive all the
time?'One
gets lost in the practice of being attentive. The practice of
beingattentive
is inattention. . . . The hearing [of the teaching] is of
thegreatest
imortance, not what you practice afterwards. The hearing is
theinstantaneous
action. The practice gives duration to problems. Practice istotal
inattention. Never practice: you can only practice mistakes.
Learningis
always new."

--
J. Krishnamurti, from The Urgency of Change

"How
will you know when you're enlightened? You won't care. It won't
makeany
difference. There won't be any sense of having to go anyplace or
doanything.
All there will be is emptiness. There will be no one home at
youraddress.
When you sit by yourself, there'll be no feeling of accomplishmentor
loss. There will be no fear of dying or of living. You will
resolutelyhave
accepted your destiny no matter what it is. You will no longer have
apersonal
choice in any matter whatsoever. At times you will observe as
awitness.
At other times you will dissolve in nirvana and you will go
beyondboth
voidness and samsara, the world appearance. There will be no
illusions.And
yet at times there will be a personality structure which you will use
aswe
use clothing, to wear -- no more and no less."

--
Rama, from "Insights: Talks on the Nature of Existence"

"If
you are interested in real spirituality, and not in a caricature,
youmust
first dare to fully recognize the enormous life force that exists in
achild,
and realize that this life force is divided against itself in you.
Itis
true that a child's effervescence decreases as he grows older. . . .
ButI
am convinced that a large part of what is attributed to the natural
agingprocess
actually springs from the suffocation of our life force - first
byteachers,
then by life in general, and finally by ourselves. And I amconvinced
that no one can become a spiritual seeker or a yogi by
suffocatinghis
or her own life force."

--
Arnaud Dejardins, from The Jump into Life

MAY

"Sentient
beings are not other than Buddha, and Buddha is not other
thansentient
beings. When mind unmanifest takes on the form of sentient beings,it
has experienced no limitation. When mind again becomes Buddha, it has
notincreased
itself."--
Huang Po

"Our
reason is petty and it is frequently at odds with our body. This,
ofcourse,
is only a way of talking, but the triumph of a man of knowledge
isthat
he has joined the two together."--
Castaneda, from Tales of Power (Ch. 3)

"The
course of a warrior's destiny is unalterable. The challenge is how
farhe
can go within those rigid bounds . . . . If there are obstacles on
hispath,
the warrior strives impeccably to overcome them. If he
findsunbearable
hardship and pain on his path, he weeps, but all his tears
puttogether
could not move the line of his destiny the breadth of one hair."--
Castaneda, from The Eagle's Gift (Ch. 5)

"The
first hallmark of enlightenment is being compassionate. I've seen
allkinds
of psychedelic displays, of folks that could show me colors
andthings,
and folks that were very telepathic and could make lots of
stuffhappen
around them, visually and like that, and some of them have not
beencool.
The only thing I recognize as being cool is being compassionate
anddoing
your best to help out."--
Stephen Gaskin, from The Caravan

"Enlightenment
is not complicated. Everybody really knows where it's at. Theonly
reason that all of us don't do it all of the time is because it's
hardand
you have to try. But you can, and everybody knows how. All you have
todo
is come up on top and tell the truth all the time. There's only
thesudden
school. If you spend twenty years trying to get enlightened,
thenyou've
been slow in the sudden school. It ain't the gradual school."--
Stephen Gaskin, from The Caravan

JUNE

"Doing
away with the I-notion is the same as not desiring the
personalattainment
of enlightenment. Not desiring that (the 'last desire', the
'lastbarrier')
is 'having it', for 'having it' is in any case merely being rid
ofthat
which concealed what is forever that which alone we are. Therefore
notdesiring
personal attainment of that is at the same time the elimination
ofthe
I-notion which constitutes its concealment. The idea of
liberationautomatically
inhibits the simple realisation that we are free."

--
Wei Wu Wei, from "All Else is Bondage" (1964)

"To be
an individual and to be yourself you don't have to do a thing.
Culturedemands
that you should be something other than what you are. What a
tremendousamount
of energy -- the will, the effort -- we waste trying to become that!
Ifthat
energy is released, what is it that we can't do? How simple it would
be foreveryone
of us to live in this world!"

--
U.G. Krishnamurti, from Thought is Your Enemy

"Eliminate
the concepts of imperfection and of perfection both, for both
areproducts
of the mind. You are only Self, and ego is only an idea,
nonexistent.Continue
to practice self-inquiry, and this will become clear to you. You
willfind
that there is no ego, no mind, to control or to be realized."

--
Ramana Maharshi

"Padma
Sambhava, the supreme Master, said 'There are no two such things
assought
and seeker (also practice and practiser, thought and thinker,
actionand
actor); when fully comprehended, the sought (practice, etc.) is found
tobe
one with the seeker (practiser, etc.). If the seeker himself,
whensought,
cannot be found, thereupon is attained the goal of the
seeking(practising,
etc.) and also the end of the search itself. Then nothing moreis
there to be sought, nor is there any need to seek anything.' He
adds'Inasmuch
as from eternity there is nothing whatsoever to be practised,there
is no need to fall under the sway of erroneous methods.' "

--
Wei Wu Wei

"Be
enthroned in the castle of goodness! If you continuously add to the
goodthings
that you can remember, there is no doubt that you will in
timeremember
the greatest good, and that is God."

--
Paramhansa Yogananda

JULY

"You
can observe a lot just by watching."--
Yogi Berra, from "Berra's Law

AUGUST

"Our
normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is
butone
special type of consciousness, while all about it, parted from it by
thefilmiest
of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness
entirelydifferent.
We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but
applythe
requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all
theircompleteness."

--
William James

"Only
to the extent that man exposes himself over and over to annihilation
canthat
which is indestructible arise within him. Only if we repeatedly
venturethrough
zones of annihilation can our contact which Divine Being become firm
andstable."

--
Von Durkheim, from "The Way of Transformation"

"The
'what should be' never did exist, but people keep trying to live up
to it.There
is no 'what should be,' there is only what is."--
Lenny Bruce

SEPTEMBER

A monk
asked Nansen, "Is there a teaching no master ever
taught?"Nansen
said, "Yes.""What
is it?" asked the monk.Nansen
replied, "It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things."

"If we
don't touch and understand relative truth, we can never touch
absolutetruth.
With relative truth we can get to absolute truth. What this means is
thatwe
have a life to live here. And when we are suffering, statements
aboutabsolute
truth often don't make too much sense. if somebody talks about
ourlives
in absolute terms when we are not ready to hear things in absolute
terms,we
look at what they are saying as unbelievable, or as useless, because
itdoesn't
help us in our daily lives. That's the dilemma with these things."--
Yudhishtara (5/23/00)

"You
can't have a clear mind. If you have clarity, you cannot have the
mind; ifyou
have the mind, you can't have clarity. The mind is always divided
againstitself,
it lives in conflict. Divisibility is its nature."--
Osho, from The Book of Wisdom

OCTOBER

"We
have only one test for ego: to us ego is that which disturbs our own
ego. Ifsomebody
hurts our ego, he is an egoist, and if he placates our ego, he is
asaint,
a humble man. But it is always our ego which serves as the measure.
It isour
own ego with which we judge if the other is an egoist or
otherwise."

--
Osho

"Ecstasy
is our very nature. Not to be ecstatic is simply unnecessary. To
beecstatic
is natural, spontaneous. It needs no effort to be ecstatic; it
needsgreat
effort to be miserable."

--
Osho, from The Book of Wisdom, Vol I

"We
have been comfortable in limitation, so we don't touch limitlessness.
Whensomeone
imposes limitedness on us, we readily agree. Anything you desire
toachieve
is a limitation. And you don't have to desire limitlessness,
becausethat
you already are. You make frontiers. The idea, 'I need freedom,'
constructsa
wall between you and freedom. Remove the concept that there is a wall
betweenyou
and freedom and what happens? This wall is imagination. You don't
have toremove
the rubbish of the wall."

--
H.W.L. Poonja, from Wake Up and Roar Vol. I

NOVEMBER

"First
there must be nothing else on your mind. You must have no other
desire orfascination
that hinders your desire for freedom. Other desires compel you
toagain
return to the cycle of birth and death. Finally, you decide to return
withno
hindrances, no preoccupations. Your decision is very strong. You
areconscious
of your decision, of where you are going. You are very conscious
ofwhat
you have selected. . . . . Facing towards That, this desire, this
seekerof
truth meets consciousness, satguru, face to face. Consciousness is
nowreflecting
itself. Reflection of consciousness on this seeker, face to face. ..
. . With this reflection, the desire is burned. Desire is gone. You
have comewith
a desire for freedom. When you arrive at the goal, the desire is
gone. Sowho
is left? Consciousness reflecting on its own consciousness."

--
H.W.L. Poonja, from Wake Up and Roar Vol. 2

"When
the watcher disappears, the notion of higher and lower levels does
notapply,
so there is no longer any inclination to struggle, attempting to
gethigher.
Then you are just where you are."

--
Chogyam Trungpa, from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

"Everything
in nature is consistent. Plants take in only poison and give
offoxygen.
They are in the process of refining energy. A human being is exactly
thesame,
and you must realize this. Everything you are involved in on the
outsiderequires
that you take in a lesser and lower form of energy, and refine it
bythe
consciousness of your connection to the Self. Feel your connection to
theSelf
and feel this energy coming down in to you every minute of your
day."--
Swami Rudrananda

DECEMBER

"To
bring your creative energy under control, bring awareness to the
breath.Samadhi
is the upward breath, the God within. With the upward
breathestablished,
one will find the entire universe inside. In all creatures theupward
breath is the same. The raja yogi is at one with this infinite
movementwhether
sitting, talking, standing, or walking. Raja yoga is the highest
yoga.It
is like climbing to the roof of a building and looking down. When
mind andwisdom
are united, then will peace be known, formless and without
qualities.This
state is called self-realization."

--
Nityananda

"The
visible institution of teachership exists in our dimension not
because ofthe
needs of the enlightened. It is there, on the contrary, because of
theinsensitivity
of the ordinary person, who will not perceive what is there
untilthis
has been magnified into an external shape."--
qtd. in "A Perfumed Scorpion" by Idries Shah

2005

JANUARY

"The
question of divine knowledge is so deep that it is truly known only
tothose
who possess it. A child has no knowledge of the attainments of an
adult.An
ordinary adult cannot understand the attainments of a learned man. In
thesame
way, a learned man cannot understand the experiences of enlightened
saintsor
Sufis."

--
Al-Ghazali (12th century Sufi master of Persia)

"Sensory
Awakening is de-hypnosis, a way out of rigid rules, feelings,
thoughts,constrictions:
being tightly bound. An active meditation: experiments,exercises,
and games designed to quiet the overdominant verbal preoccupation
ofthe
mind, to let go of chronic excessive muscular tension and
focusconsciousness
on direct sensory experience in the here and now."

--
Bernard Gunther, "Sense Relaxation" (1968)

FEBRUARY

"If
the seeker understood the meaning of the saying 'the color of water
takes onthe
color of the receptacle', he would admit the validity of all beliefs,
andwould
recognize the Real in every manifest form and every object of
faith."

--
from the Fusus al-Hikam (Settings of Wisdom) of Sufi master Ibn Arabi

"The
most energy that you can possibly contain with your ego is less than
nothaving
ego and being open to everybody else, because then you have access
toeverybody's
energy -- the Universe's energy -- and it is so much more
thananybody
can possibly contain."

--
Stephen Gaskin

MARCH

"A
sorcerer is not only aware of different realities, but he uses that
knowledgein
practicalities. Sorcerers know -- not only intellectually but
alsopractically
-- that reality, or the world as we know it, consists only of
anagreement
extracted out of every one of us. That agreement could be made
tocollapse,
since it's only a social phenomenon. And when it collapses, the
wholeworld
collapses with it."

--
Florinda Donner, "Being-in-Dreaming"

APRIL

"To
have a spiritual life, all you do is become more and more of a
worker. Andit
is important to understand the concept of work: you work deeper, you
growmore.
All you get by working better and deeper is the capacity to work
stillbetter
and still deeper."

--
Swami Rudrananda (1928-1973)

"As
the force works through you, you can begin to understand the relation
ofthat
flow of energy to Creation. It is Creation. When you begin to
touchCreation
and see life come through you and touch other people, you
understandthat
you in no way have any right to think of it as yourself, no more than
anyparent
has the right to feel that a child is theirs. It is their
responsibility,it
is not their creation."

--
Rudi

"Most
of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works
arenot
false but nonsensical. As a result, we cannot give any answers to
questionsof
this kind, but can only establish that they are in fact
nonsensical."

--
Wittgenstein, from Tractatus Logico-Philosophus

MAY

"There
is, as I have often noted, a widespread and wrong impression that
anyonewho
sees through the illusions of the ego must become a self-effacing
andanonymous
personality, whereas my own feeling has always been that in order
tobe
a real person you must know how to be a genuine fake. In other words,
onlythose
who can accept their own annihilation can have the courage to be
trueindividuals.
The rest are too tender with themselves, too scared of
losingindividuality."

--
Alan Watts, 'In My Own Way: An Autobiography'

"The
meaning of freedom can never be grasped by the divided mind. If I
feelseparate
from my experience, and from the world, freedom will seem to be
theextent
to which I can push the world around, and fate the extent to which
theworld
pushes me around. But to the whole mind there is no contrast of 'I'
andthe
world. There is just one process acting, and it does everything
thathappens."

--
Alan Watts, _The Wisdom of Insecurity_

JUNE

"We
often find, as we go merrily on our spiritual way, that we have to
reverseourselves
if we want to stay with our truth. Finding our dharma is a little
likefinding
a floating crap game; it doesn't stay in one place, it's always
changingits
location. You think you know what your route is. You've just gotten
all yournew
outfits and beads and brownie badges, all the things that go with
your newschtick
-- and then suddenly, the whole thing turns dead and empty and
horrible.What
are you going to do? My commitment must be to truth, not to
consistency.Give
the outfits to the nearest Salvation Army thrift store, and go
on."

--
Ram Dass, from "Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita"

JULY

To
be called a 'remover of darkness' ('guru')One
must completely relinquish the idea 'I am the body.'

There
is no understanding higher than this;Even
'God,' an ideal only, is not higher thanOne
who has relinquished this false idea,And
become a remover of darkness.

Such
a one is a manifestation ofThe
bliss of universal consciousness.Such
a one is the ideal of Truth made manifest.

"Meditative
prayer is a stern discipline and one which cannot be learned
byforce.
It requires unending courage and perseverance, and those who are
notwilling
to work at it patiently will finally end in compromise. Here,
aselsewhere,
compromise is only another name for failure."

--
Thomas Merton, from 'Thoughts in Solitude'

AUGUST

"The
old nagual told us that, as a general rule, we human beings were
nevertaught
to love. We were taught only to feel gratifying emotions,
pertinentexclusively
to the personal Me. Infinity is sublime and without pity, he
said,and
there's no room for fallacious concepts, no matter how pleasant they
mayseem
to us." -- Taisha Abelar

OCTOBER

Why
does one hold an umbrella? For protection from rain. The appearance
ofduality
is the rain, Maya; knowledge of truth is the umbrella, and a
one-pointedmind
is the handle. Truth is all, but few realize it. Maya, the
eternalappearance
of duality, is from the Self, not the other way around. The mind
isnot
the Self, it is only a reflection of the Self. It ends when
recognized assuch,
but the Self has no ending. The mind is subject to delusions, but the
Selfis
neither deluded nor subject to delusions. The mind is to the Self as
theriver
is to the sea. The Self is the sea, its waters without limit to the
eye.

--
Nityananda, from the Chidakash Sutras

The
hunger for the devotion that leads to peacemust
be intense and consistent.The
larger the fire, the sooner the water boils.Focused
meditation is the heat,peace
is the water which boils and risesas
vapor to the higher planes.Fully
calmed, the mind becomes pure.This
peace costs nothing but the sacrifice of the ego.When
one is filled with this peace,those
around one also benefit.When
it begins in one, it transmits to others.Even
among thousands, if one has this peace,others
also enjoy a part of it.When
moving among a crowd of people,as
in this world is ever the case,a
meditative one has the peace of the hunter approaching a tiger.

--
Nityananda, from the Chidakash Sutras, verse 183

(interpretive
translation by Petros)

This
is the 500th Petros-Truth message.

"Thoughts,
good or bad, take you farther from the Self and not nearer,
becausethe
Self is more intimate than thoughts. You are Self, whereas the
thoughts arealien
to the Self."

--
from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi p. 309

"The
body being insentient cannot say 'I'. The Self being infinite cannot
say'I'
either. Who then says 'I'? Find out from where this 'I' arises. Then
this'I'
will disappear and the infinite Self will remain. This 'I' is only
the knotbetween
the sentient and the insentient. The body is not 'I', the Self is
not'I'.
Who, then, is the 'I' -- From where does it arise?"

--
from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, p 303

"If
he is a witness to his walking, if he really does not walk while
walking, itis
only he who actually sees it so; it will be difficult even for others
tounderstand
it. If he is a witness to his talking, he will not talk
whiletalking,
he will remain a witness alone."

"The
true master does not answer a disciple's question; he answers
thequestioner.
He turns the question into a quest."

--
Osho, from the book 'Ta Hui: The Great Zen Master'

NOVEMBER

"Love
demands the impossible. It says: On the first step you have to drop
theego.
There is no need to refine it and there is no need to work on
it."

--
Osho; from The Beloved: Talks on the Bauls, Vol. I (1978) p. 23

"The
limited mind is the soil in which the ego is rooted; and the
egoperpetuates
ignorance through the many illusions in which it is caught. The
egoprevents
the manifestation of infinite knowledge already latent in the soul,
andis
the most formidable obstacle in the attainment of God. A Persian poem
says,'It
is extremely difficult to pierce through the veil of ignorance; for
there isa
rock on fire'. As the flame of fire cannot rise very high if a rock
is placedupon
it, a desire to know one's own true nature cannot lead to the truth
as longas
the burden of the ego lies upon consciousness. Success in finding
oneself isrendered
impossible by the ego, which persists throughout the journey of
thesoul.
Though more and more detached as the soul advances on the Path, it
remainsuntil
the last stage of the seventh plane."

--
Meher Baba, from "God to Man and Man to God" Ch. 3

DECEMBER

Meditation
associated with structural changes in brain

Courtesy
Massachusetts General Hospitaland
World Science staff

Regular
meditation appears to produce structural changes in areas of the
brainassociated
with attention and sensory processing, a study has found.

The
imaging study, led by Massachusetts General Hospital researchers,
showedthat
particular areas of the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the
brain, werethicker
in participants who were experienced practitioners of a type
ofmeditation
commonly practiced in the U.S. and other Western countries.

The
article appears in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal NeuroReport, and
theresearch
also is being presented Nov. 14 at the Society for Neuroscience
meetingin
Washington, DC.

Our
results suggest that meditation can produce experience-based
structuralalterations
in the brain,Â" said Sara Lazar, PhD, of the MGH
PsychiatricNeuroimaging
Research Program, the study's lead author. "We also
foundevidence
that mediation may slow down the aging-related atrophy of certain
areasof
the brain."

Studies
have shown that mediation can produce alterations in brain activity,
andmeditation
practitioners have described changes in mental function that
lastlong
after actual meditation ceases, implying long-term effects. However,
thosestudies
usually examined Buddhist monks who practiced mediation as a
centralfocus
of their lives.

To
investigate whether meditation as typically practiced in the U.S.
couldchange
the brain's structure, the current study enrolled 20 practitioners
ofBuddhist
insight meditation - which focuses on "mindfulness," a
specific,nonjudgmental
awareness of sensations, feelings and state of mind. They
averagednine
years of mediation experience and practiced about six hours per week.
Forcomparison,
15 people with no experience of meditation or yoga were enrolled
ascontrols.

Using
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), the researchers found that
regionsinvolved
in the mental activities that characterize insight meditation
werethicker
in the meditators than in the controls, the first evidence
thatalterations
in brain structure may be associated with meditation. They alsofound
that, in an area associated with the integration of emotional
andcognitive
processes, differences in cortical thickness were more pronounced
inolder
participants, suggesting that meditation could reduce the thinning of
thecortex
that typically occurs with aging.

2006

JANUARY

"To
listen to a master is one thing, and to read the same words is
totallydifferent,
because the living presence of the master is no more behind
thewords.
You can not see those eyes, you can not see those gestures, you can
notsee
in those words the same authority -- you can not feel those same
silentgaps.
The presence of the master, his charisma, his energy is missing in
thewritten
word. The presence is absolutely necessary."

--
Osho (from "Ta Hui")

MARCH

"For
one who desires to study human mechanicality in general and to make
itclear
to himself, the very best object of study is he himself with his
ownmechanicality;
and to study this practically and to understand it sensibly, withall
one's being, and not 'psychopathically,' that is, with only one part
ofone's
entire presence, is possible only as a result of correctly
conductedself-observation.
And as regards this possibility of correctly
conductingself-observation
and conducting it without the risk of incurring the
maleficentconsequences
which have more than once been observed from people's attempts todo
this without proper knowledge, it is necessary that the warning must
be given--
in order to avoid the possibility of excessive zeal -- that our
experience,based
on the vast exact information we have, has shown that this is not
sosimple
a thing as at first glance it may appear. This is why we make the
studyof
the mechanicality of contemporary man the groundwork of a correctly
conductedself-observation."

--
Gurdjieff, from: All and Everything, First Series: An Objectively
Impartial Criticism ofthe
Life of Man p.1209

Such
is the ordinary average man -- an unconscious slave entirely at
theservice
of all-universal purposes, which are alien to his own
personalindividuality.
He may live through all his years as he is, and as such bedestroyed
for ever. But at the same time Great Nature has given him
thepossibility
of being not merely a blind tool entirely at the service of
theseall-universal
objective purposes but, while serving Her and actualizing what
isforeordained
for him -- which is the lot of every breathing creature -- ofworking
at the same time also for himself, for his own egoistic
individuality.This
possibility was given also for service to the common purpose, owing
to thefact
that, for the equilibrium of these objective laws, such
relativelyliberated
people are necessary. Although the said liberation is
possible,nevertheless
whether any particular man has the chance to attain it -- that
isdifficult
to say."

--
Gurdjieff, from All and Everything, First Series: An Objectively
ImpartialCriticism
of the Life of Man, p. 1219

"There
can be no artificial escape from this problem which has always
troubledhumanity
and from which it has found no satisfying issue. The tree of
theknowledge
of good and evil with its sweet and bitter fruits is secretly
rootedin
the very nature of the Inconscience from which our being has emerged
and onwhich
it still stands as a nether soil and basis of our physical existence;
ithas
grown visibly on the surface in the manifold branchings of the
Ignorancewhich
is still the main bulk and condition of our consciousness in its
difficultevolution
towards a supreme consciousness and an integral awareness. As long
asthere
is this soil with the unfound roots in it and this nourishing air
andclimate
of Ignorance, the tree will grow and flourish and put forth its
dualblossoms
and its fruit of mixed nature. It would follow that there can be
nofinal
solution until we have turned out inconscience into the
greaterconsciousness,
made the truth of self and spirit our life-basis and transformedour
ignorance into a higher knowledge. All other expedients will only
bemakeshifts
or blind issues; a complete and radical transformation of our
natureis
the only true solution."

--
From Aurobindo's THE LIFE DIVINE p. 627

"Much
energy is wasted in fighting with oneself, in rejecting, condemning .
. .If
you start accepting yourself you become a reservoir of energy,
because thenthe
conflict ceases, then there is no civil war, then you are one piece.
Muchenergy
is preserved, and that overflowing energy is creativity."

--
Osho, from Hammer on the Rock: A Darshan Diary (Dec. 1975), p 20

"The
buddha in the mind is like the fragrance in a tree. Buddha comes from
amind
free of suffering, as a fragrance comes from a tree free of decay.
Nofragrance
without a tree -- no buddha without a mind!"

--
Bodhidharma

(5th
century Indian master; brought Buddhism to China and established what
wouldbecome
the tradition of Ch'an / Zen.)

APRIL

"Life
is a ripoff when you expect to get what you want. Life works when
youchoose
what you got. Actually what you got is what you chose. To move on,
chooseit."